Tom Brake: I thank the Secretary of State for his response. He will be aware that African Union troops will be key to ensuring that humanitarian aid arrives. He will also know that two soldiers were recently killed and 36 were kidnapped, most of whom have recently been released. On 22 October, 7,700 AU troops should be there on the ground. Does the Secretary of State believe that they will be, does he consider that a sufficient number, and what does he think that the UK can do to help?

Hilary Benn: The most practical contribution is to improve security. With improved security and an increased capacity on the part of the Afghanistan Government to deliver for their poor will come a better chance to deal with the problems of what is, indeed, a narco state. Everyone recognises that. When I visited Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan earlier this year. I had the chance to see the work of the provincial teams. That work is undoubtedly making a difference, but the effort has to be a joint one. In the end, the Government of Afghanistan must lead that effort, and we will continue to help them.

Tony Blair: The purpose of the review is obviously to ensure that the ambulance services work as well as they possibly can, and that includes a proposal to move to a single ambulance service for the west midlands. Obviously, we must look at all the consultations and representations that are made to us, but in the end the review is not cost-driven, but efficiency driven, and we must try to ensure that we have the most effective proposal to deliver decent ambulance services to people in the midlands and elsewhere.

Tony Blair: The reason that I remain wedded to that proposal is that the people who are in charge of fighting terrorism in this country—and, in particular, the senior police officer in charge—say, for reasons that I find personally absolutely compelling, that it is necessary to have that power to protect the public.
	It is not a matter of mystery why we are putting the proposal forward. It was originally put forward by the Association of Chief Police Officers, and it is now being backed by the chief police officer in charge of fighting terrorism in this country. He set out his views in a memorandum, with examples, last week. I have said that I found them compelling. Let us have a debate about the strength or otherwise of the proposals, but I believe that the case is convincing.
	The reason that the chief police officer gives is also very clear. The particular nature of this type of terrorism means that very often the police will have to arrest people relatively early in the conspiracy to cause terrorist offences. Therefore, the police will need a longer period of detention to get the evidence necessary to charge those people properly. That is the reason the police give. Rather than allegations of whether we are backing down or standing firm, we should debate the substance of the proposals, consistent, I hope, with the understanding right across the House in the aftermath of 7 July, when more than 50 people lost their lives in the terrorist attacks and consistent with our obligation to do our level best to protect the citizens of this country.

Ian Liddell-Grainger: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide a statutory framework for full public consultation by local authorities in England whenever major developments are proposed by such authorities.
	Those hon. Members who are currently scuttling towards the exit are, perhaps, on their way to talk to constituents, to take advice from their Whips or to listen to their secretaries. They are off to indulge in what everybody describes as "consultation". I wish that they would stay, because consultation is precisely what my little Bill is all about.
	To consult is a laudable democratic principle. Every weekend, I consult my constituents: I consult my office, my family, the butcher, the baker and even the candlestick-maker—when he is not up to his wick in wax! I do not have to take a blind bit of notice of any of them, but we like to consult, do we not? We like to go through the motions of seeking opinion; we may not be convinced by all that we hear, but at least we have bothered to ask. As a matter of fact, I am a committed advocate of consultation, but I want it to mean something. I want the people who give us their views to know that we have taken notice and, perhaps, have even adopted some of their ideas. I want consultation that works, which is what this Bill is about.
	Consultation has become a ludicrous buzzword. The Government swear by it—205 different consultations on new Government plans are currently under way, to which those of us with strong opinions and ample time are free to contribute our thoughts. There is, however, one small drawback: consultation does not involve any debate at all. The public are invited to pour in their opinion, which may be plagiarised, twisted or ignored.
	The scale of the consultation industry reminds me of the old maxim, "divide and rule". There are now so many official consultations that it is well nigh impossible to keep abreast of them, let alone to contribute. In addition to the Government's 205 open consultations, all of which are listed on a website that is expensively devoted to that purpose, there is an even bigger list of the Government's closed consultations. For example, the Health and Safety Executive is consulting on regulations concerning vibration at work. My office in this building is underneath Big Ben, so I consider myself an expert on vibration at work. Under the rules that govern closed consultations, however, I am not expert enough, so, although my entire body shakes uncontrollably whenever the clock strikes the hour, as far as the Health and Safety Executive is concerned, I can get knotted.
	Such are the small complications of consultation, but the big complications are much more serious. Consultations are voluntary, are not binding, and sad to say, are sometimes unworthy of the very paper that they end up being printed on. Making sure that consultation takes place at all is left to a toothless instrument of political persuasion—the vague, woolly and completely unenforceable code of conduct. Where would poor old Moses be today if God had handed him a code of conduct rather than 10 proper commandments? "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's ass" has more of a ring to it than, "Perhaps it would be better to leave the livestock alone."
	If anyone wants to examine the William Shakespeare of codes of conduct, I invite them to scrutinise that devised by those matchless boffins of blether and bureaucracy, the Cabinet Office. This is how it sounds:
	"Code 1. Consult widely throughout the process, allowing a minimum of 12 weeks for consultation."
	What is meant by "widely"? Is that everybody, almost everybody, a chosen handful, or what?
	"Code 2. Be clear about what your proposals are."
	Clarity in government—that is a novelty.
	"Code 3. Ensure that your consultation is concise and accessible."
	How is one to do that?
	"Code 4. Give feedback regarding the responses received and how the consultation process influenced the policy."
	What sort of feedback?
	"Code 5. Monitor your department's effectiveness at consultation, including through the use of a designated consultation co-ordinator."
	In other words, hire a few more civil servants.
	"Code 6. Ensure your consultation follows better regulation best practice, including carrying out a Regulatory Impact Assessment."
	Where would we all be without a regulatory impact assessment?
	What the Cabinet Office does today, our local authorities are encouraged, cajoled or pretty well forced to do tomorrow. That is the problem. Codes of conduct are growing like Topsy. Consultations are bursting out everywhere about everything. They generate mountains of paper, they are not legally binding, and there are no set standards whatever.
	Before the general election—the only bit of recent genuine national consultation in this country—I argued in my constituency that we could do with some proper consultation whenever controversial schemes are proposed by local authorities. I had in mind the plans of West Somerset district council to shift offices and redevelop land. Months later—years later—discussions about those plans are still going on. I am certain that there would have been far fewer grounds for argument or anger if the council had properly consulted people fully from the start.
	First we need a decent definition of the word itself. The "Pocket Oxford Dictionary" suggests the following meanings:
	"seeking information or advice . . . taking into consideration the views of people . . . considering feelings".
	I am sure that every planner and politician in the land would endorse such sentiments and vow that consultation is a splendid part of the process—it is like motherhood and apple pie; one could not possibly disagree with the general idea—but with such a woolly meaning, consultation can be as good or as bad as planners and politicians prefer. The trouble is that too many planners and politicians are prepared to settle for the barest minimum when it comes to standards of consulting people.
	I am sorry to say that the blame lies here in Westminster. This House has always fought shy of spelling out what consultation should be—how local people are canvassed, how local views are assessed, what account is taken of opinion, and how many meetings will be held. The remit to consult is written into all local government legislation, but the dotted i's and crossed t's have always been left to the locals and their codes of conduct. Basically, this House has copped out.
	My private Member's Bill is designed effectively to put such procedures in front of Parliament. It will no longer be good enough for the transport authority to insert a tiny notice on page 103 of the classified ads in the local paper telling everybody what road is about to be closed, widened, re-rerouted or subjected to a half-baked new traffic management scheme. Under this Bill, the nature of the proposals would have to be crystal clear and they would have to be advertised so that people can see them. Local authorities would have to go out of their way to let people know what they are doing, and the Bill would specify how far out of their way they had to go. On the coastline in my constituency is a place called Hinkley point, which is probably more famous for its nuclear power station than its landscape. Rumours abound that there might be a new power plant there—one day, perhaps soon. The need for a new and comprehensive consultation system is therefore urgent.
	Critics may say that consultation costs money. In the short term, yes, there will be costs. However, paying for sensible minimum standards—specified high- profile newspaper advertisements, intelligible letters to householders, public meetings and the like—will surely save money in the long term. If planners and politicians listen to local opinion first and take action based on what people really want rather than on what the town hall thinks that they want, it can only lead to better decision making.
	The inspiration for the idea was not merely born out of the confusion in West Somerset. I can cite hundreds of examples from up and down the country, where local authorities have paid lip service to the concept of consultation and reaped the consequences of unpopularity thereafter. Let me give one current example. Devon county council—my next-door council—decided, without the merest hint of asking anybody, to sell one of its most valuable assets, Exeter airport. One can picture the scene at Devon county hall: "I say old fruit, wouldn't it be spiffing if we flogged off the airport?" Did the council consult? No. Instead, it called in some expensive City types to offload the airport. No consultation whatever took place.
	Guess what—the Government have rightly called in the decision to have it reviewed by the Competition Commission. The council could have avoided that. The tragedy is that local authorities are not doing anything wrong. They are obeying the law as it stands. However, the law as it stands is legless legislation. The law leaves interpretation of the word "consultation" purely to the town halls.
	My Bill spells out the problem. It has the support of Members of Parliament from all parties. My Bill makes sense and I commend it to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Ian Liddell-Grainger, David Heyes, Kelvin Hopkins, Mr. Robert Syms, Mr. Ben Wallace, Stephen Hammond, Mr. Geoffrey Cox and David Mundell.

Caroline Spelman: My hon. Friend makes a point about those who operate within the service and who put their lives on the line. I hope that he will speak in this debate and give us the benefit of his inside knowledge. I also hope that there is a chink in the Government's armour with a Minister susceptible to such important arguments.
	I know that advances in technology can change the way that services are delivered, but anyone who has a car equipped with satellite navigation will know that it is far from infallible and that a little local knowledge counts for a lot. Common sense tells us that when it comes to providing emergency services, local knowledge is a precious commodity—speed of response is everything, and that can so easily be compromised by such practical issues as time lost through not being able to place an address or even a misunderstanding arising from an operator who is unfamiliar with the accent of someone in distress.
	It is not just an issue of proximity, however, but priority. Within a region, which area will get first call on where resources are targeted? It is nearly always the urban areas at the expense of the rural areas.

Caroline Spelman: I agree totally with my hon. Friend, and he will have heard from the support for his intervention that the experience of most of us is that the regionalisation of call centres for our police services is simply not working. It is unpopular with those of us who want to use the service and generally increases anxiety when a critical 999 call is being made. It is not working well.
	In my constituency, police resources have been diverted into Birmingham, which has left outlying areas very exposed. When I asked my local chief constable why response times were so long in my constituency, he replied, "It's simple, Mrs. Spelman, as a police force we have 98 hot spots to focus on and none of those is in your constituency." With people forking out for way above inflation increases in council tax, they are entitled to ask why the Government can no longer afford to maintain local services.
	That issue of resource allocation is part and parcel of accountability. Once the regional framework for such services has been established, they will no longer be answerable to the communities that they serve. By determining targets and priorities at a regional level, accountability is being eroded, and in the long term that can only make life more difficult for front-line staff. Historically, the strength of our emergency services has been partly derived from the support of the society that they serve, but by adopting a regional structure that crucial relationship is broken. How can a single body serving a region of up to 8 million people possibly be more responsive than a locally-based, locally-accountable service?
	Over and above the advantages that we know that we will lose by moving to a regional structure, what about all the risks that go with such a radical upheaval? I am not a natural pessimist, but the track record of this Government on delivering grand IT projects is not great. The tax credits and the Passport Agency fiasco bear witness to how badly things can go wrong, and the consequences of such a breakdown when it comes to providing rescue services is unimaginable. Obviously, the worst case scenario is loss of life arising from an IT breakdown, but even risks such as project over-run in terms of both time and budget will end up impacting on council tax bills. Yet again people will be forced to dip into their pockets and pay for the costs of regionalisation, which they never even wanted—costs that some estimate could run as high as £988 million for the restructuring of fire services alone.
	What is the driver behind this headlong rush into regionalisation? Certainly, it is not that local people want it. As a project, it seems fraught with risks that are simply not outweighed by the benefits. I am no military tactician, but it would seem elementary that in the current climate of heightened security, consolidating multiple emergency services into just one location makes the overall structure even more vulnerable to attack. If a regional centre is knocked out, I presume that the fallback would be another regional centre even further away. That smacks of putting all our eggs in one basket.
	No one is going to be fooled by the packaging of these proposals. People can see that reorganisation is a cost-cutting exercise, not least because of the 1,300 or so jobs that will be lost in local fire control rooms. Although these changes will not be complete until 2009, as the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) pointed out, the reality is that jobs will start leaching away from now, undermining the quality of the service in the interim. That will happen with all emergency services as regionalisation gathers pace. Attractive headlines such as "A New Era for NHS Ambulance Services", cannot mask the inevitable decline that will follow. Certainly, that will not satisfy an efficient ambulance trust such as Warwickshire, which makes half the number of patient journeys as London with just one tenth of the funding. Ambulance trust managers suspect that it is much more about the Government delivering their manifesto pledge to provide £250 million worth of savings in NHS administration. Surely it is the Chancellor who should be subject to efficiency savings and performance delivery targets rather than our front-line emergency services.
	In whose interest is regionalisation really taking place? The ambulance service review said that trusts needed to be
	"of a size to provide better financial, operational and resource management."
	But there is no mention of the patients. Everyone knows that rural ambulances have to carry more kit because of the greater distances over which they have to travel, but will that get overlooked under regional procurement? I am not even convinced that regionalisation delivers cost benefits. It is rare for reorganisation to save money. It is not that we believe that no scope exists for amalgamating services; scope does exist, if doing so is practical and people want it. That is why we have set out an alternative "clustering" of local authorities, as and when they see fit. Such an arrangement will be more responsive to local demands and will better reflect considerations such as population, geography and infrastructure. It is a far more practical solution than a one-size-fits-all jacket of regionalisation. Above all, it ensures proper accountability.

Andrew Turner: May I provide some evidence to support my hon. Friend's assertion? Only last night, the now Conservative-controlled Isle of Wight council agreed to co-operate with Conservative-controlled Hampshire council on the provision of fire services. They did not need amalgamate to provide an improved service.

Caroline Spelman: My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) demonstrates the benefit of an entirely voluntary, clustered approach in which both parties see the benefit of the merger.
	People at the front line know where and when to coalesce far better than a bureaucrat in Whitehall, so why do the Government not trust them and give them that freedom? But this Government will not embrace clustering because to do so is to grant local authorities and service providers a degree of autonomy: in other words, it is decentralisation. No matter how hard the Government try to speak the language of localism, they still behave as if central Government know best. That is why regionalisation, in whatever form, is not a way of delivering localism; it is just a way of enforcing centralism. The evidence is there. The Government have created a plethora of unelected regional bodies in what amounts to a "quangocracy". The A to Z of this quangocracy covers art, biodiversity, climate change, fire, housing, industry, public health, rural affairs, social inclusion, tobacco, transport and waste.
	Local people are finding that decisions directly affecting their lives are being taken by regional assemblies that they cannot hold to account. Who are these assemblies answerable to? They are answerable to nobody—except the Deputy Prime Minister. If that is localism, the mind boggles as to what form a dictatorship would take. If people are paying for them, do they not have a right to know what these unelected regional bodies are up to? Why are the regional assemblies exempt from the Freedom of Information Act 2000? The Lord Chancellor still has not replied to that question, which I put to him a week ago, so perhaps the Minister could do so when he responds.
	Something tells me that that the Government are all too aware of the folly of this regionalisation programme. There are few—except the Deputy Prime Minister himself—who would rush to defend it, but in fact regionalisation has gone beyond being his personal plaything: it has become a proxy for sweeping cuts to our public services. Taxpayers have a right to know what has happened to their money. Has a risk assessment or a cost-benefit analysis of regionalisation been carried out? [Interruption.] The Minister says yes, so perhaps he we would like to publish it and make it available to Members.
	When local police stations, fire control rooms and ambulance trusts are boarded up and the land used for the Deputy Prime Minister's so-called £60,000 houses, people will see how he and the Chancellor have conspired to scrap their local emergency services, and they will not thank them for it. There is no demand for regionalisation; the quality of our services will suffer and it comes at a high price. Surely now is the time to abort this disastrous regionalisation programme and to accede to the wishes of the electorate. The Deputy Prime Minister is playing politics with people's lives, putting his empire building before the public interest. The rest of us in politics understand that the public interest must come first.

David Drew: As my hon. Friend knows and has been mentioned, we have the tri-service centre in Quedgeley, in Gloucester, which has been subjected to an initial evaluation. Will he now agree to a full evaluation, and will he talk to the various parts of that service—not just the management, but the workers—to see whether that model has some merit and could be applied in other parts of the country?

Jim Fitzpatrick: The building regulations document is out for consultation at the moment and we expect the outcome of that consultation to be known shortly. I shall endeavour to supply the hon. Gentleman with the exact date in due course.
	The Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 put prevention at the heart of the Government's agenda for improving the fire and rescue service and created a new duty to promote fire safety. The Government are also reforming general fire safety legislation, ensuring that the responsibility for safety in non-domestic premises will rest with the person responsible for those premises. From 1 April next year, the Regulatory Reform Order 2001 will simplify the law, remove a bureaucratic regime of fire certification, and replace it with a modern risk assessment approach.
	We are investing substantially in the service, including in new personal protective equipment for firefighters' own safety and new training facilities and opportunities. In particular, the training facilities for urban search and rescue at the Fire Service college are now regarded as the best in the world. Grant support is also targeted for local action to reduce arson and other fire risks. Under the home fire risk check programme, for example, we are funding to the total of £25 million a programme of visits to the 1,250,000 houses that are judged to be most at risk from fire to offer advice and practical help such as the free installation of smoke alarms. In the first six months of this year alone, 87,000 such visits took place and 91,000 new smoke alarms were fitted. I have already mentioned this morning's Westminster Hall debate on the subject, sponsored by the hon. Member for Rochdale.
	In 2005–06, fire and rescue authorities received an average 3.7 per cent. grant increase and no authority received less than 2.5 per cent. In addition to that investment in fire prevention and mainstream emergency response, the Government are investing heavily in a new resilience framework—approaching £1 billion to create a national network of regional fire control centres, called FiReControl—a new radio system called Firelink and a new dimensions programme, which has seen us commit £180 million for mass decontamination, urban search and rescue, and high volume pumping equipment to improve the capability of the fire and rescue service to respond to major disasters, including terrorist incidents.

Tony Wright: My hon. Friend made a powerful case about the fire control centres, but he has a less powerful case in relation to some other services. In Staffordshire, we have a high performing police force. I have an outstandingly successful local primary care trust and the Staffordshire ambulance service is the best performing ambulance service in the country with the best response times. Our approach to public services used to be based around the slogan, "What matters is what works." That was sensible. What is not sensible is to exchange that for a slogan of, "If it's working well, abolish it."

Jim Fitzpatrick: I disagree with the hon. Gentleman; the consultation is open. I have indicated that, at the conclusion of the submissions, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will report to the House in due course. Clearly that will provide opportunities to colleagues to make their feelings known.
	It is our belief that ambulance trusts need to be of a size that enables appropriate investment in people and resources to underpin current and future services. These proposals will ensure that resources are targeted where they are most needed in improving patient care and supporting the front line. It is not about reducing frontline service provision. Local innovations and successes will not only be preserved, but will be shared to the benefit of all patients.
	We have an opportunity to lift the quality of the lowest and to set a new high benchmark where world-class services are provided for patients wherever they live. Nor is it about one trust taking over another; it is about new trusts that provide efficient and effective locally responsive ambulance trusts that meet patient needs. We believe that these proposals will put the NHS in the best position to provide convenient, consistently high quality and appropriately mobile health care for the people of England. I am sure that the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton) will be saying more about this in due course.

Mark Francois: I thank the Minister for his courtesy in giving way. May I take him back to policing? The Government seem convinced that big is beautiful. They are trying to press chief constables to have fewer and fewer divisions and are now threatening to get rid of well established county forces such Essex. How will having fewer and fewer divisions and getting rid of the Essex police force make that force more accountable to the local people whom they are supposed to serve?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I remind the hon. Gentleman that one of the big successes in recent years, certainly in London, has been neighbourhood policing; dedicated teams in the locality that are connecting with local people and local representatives, whether these are democratically elected or community groups. As I said, the measure will give capacity to allow forces to deal with the big incidents and challenges of the 21st century, while being able to be responsive to local needs and to deal with local problems, which is what people want most. That is a success story that we are rolling out across the country.
	Finally, over the summer recess, I have had the opportunity to visit a number of fire and rescue services across the country. These visits have given me the opportunity to see at first hand the excellent work going on locally, especially new work on community safety, including youth intervention schemes and the growing use of co-responder schemes in which, again, the emergency services work together.
	Fire and rescue authorities have in general responded well to the challenge presented by their new responsibilities. The combination of national strategy and investment with local delivery led by elected fire and rescue authority members is working. Nowhere is this clearer than in the voluntary regional management boards, where Conservative and Liberal Democrat members work alongside their Labour colleagues to provide the best service for their communities. They know how important it is to support the fire and rescue service, and the improvements can be clearly seen on the ground.
	Our approach—I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), but I do firmly believe in our approach—has the full backing of the Chief Fire Officers Association, who lead a practitioners' forum that gives us expert professional advice, the Local Government Association, who are key partners in modernisation, and the stakeholders represented in our business and community safety forum.
	I pay tribute to our whole-time, day crewing and retained firefighters as well as to other fire service staff who serve our communities well. We know that, regardless of debates about geographic boundaries and management structures, the Fire and Rescue Service1 will continue to work with local people, elected representatives from all parties and other emergency services to give the public the protection and the help they expect and deserve.

Sarah Teather: That is an interesting observation and perhaps evidence of a lurch to the left by the Conservatives.
	As the Minister said, the impetus for fire service reform came from the Bain review, but it focused on the need for more fire prevention, rather than just firefighting, and that can be achieved only by a community-based force. Bain specifically advised against regional reorganisation and instead proposed regional co-operation. He suggested that co-operation could achieve all the benefits without major organisational structure change. However, the Government's response ignored Bain's advice and set out to establish regional fire authorities as part of regional assemblies. Once the wheels came off the plan for elected regional assemblies, the Government ploughed ahead regardless. Had fire services been accountable to elected regional assemblies, that would have dealt with the democratic deficit created by an unelected tax levying body, but without the democratisation of regional government the major structural reorganisation has little genuine benefit for local people.

Sarah Teather: The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. There is a tendency to view structures that work in one area as easily transplantable elsewhere. We see that with many of the Government's ideas about city regions in the north. Their ideas might work perfectly well in some areas of the north of England, but they will not transfer well to the south-east or east of the country where the relationship between cities and rural areas is not the same. We have to accept that the one-size-fits-all approach will not deliver the improvements in service delivery that we want. It will certainly not improve democratic accountability.
	There seems to be no obvious logic to the structural reorganisation proposed for ambulance services. The Government seem to have picked a random size for new ambulance trusts that ties in with none of the other tiers of administration in the national health service. Instead of reforming ambulance services into arbitrarily sized organisations, the Government should consider integrating services with hospitals and emergency care. How will it be possible to do anything sensible if trusts are not coterminous with anything already in the system? A modern ambulance service is not just about driving injured people to hospital; it is staffed by highly trained paramedics who increasingly treat casualties at the scene.
	The proposed move will tear a hole in any attempt to connect the ambulance service to the rest of the NHS. Why move to larger authorities? There is no evidence to suggest that it would be more efficient or that it would save more lives. We have already heard quotes from the chief executive of the Staffordshire ambulance trust, who is extremely concerned. We should listen carefully to people on the ground with experience of running such services who say that a move to larger structures will not help to improve the service to patients.

Sarah Teather: I am sure that the North East ambulance service does an extremely good job, but I return to my earlier point: the fact that something works well in the north-east does not mean that the same structure will work well if it is applied somewhere else.
	The Government are reorganising all our public services, but that makes a mockery of the claim that the new terms of reference for Sir Michael Lyons will deal with all the possible things that might come under local government. By the time he gets around to considering them, there will not be much left for local government to do.
	We are holding the wrong debate; we are talking about structures when we should be talking about accountability. The debate should be about how we can fit structures into our elected organisations and then put them under the control of elected representatives. Our party is conducting a major review of how local services should be delivered and by whom, but at the heart of our thinking will be the principle of accountability. We have learned that when 77.9 per cent. of people vote against something that we want to do we do not plough ahead and do it regardless. Taking note of those views is accountability. That is what we should do when we are elected and it is something that the Government need to learn.

Nick Raynsford: I wholeheartedly concur with my hon. Friend, who rightly highlights the good work that is being done in a number of fire authorities. Such work is being accelerated as a result of White Paper, the legislation and the additional funds, to which my hon. Friend the Minister rightly alluded, that are being used to promote fire safety and ensure the greater installation of smoke alarms, particularly in vulnerable people's homes. It is astonishing that the hon. Member for Meriden referred to cuts in expenditure on emergency services. When the Conservative party was in government, the fire service did not have the equipment that it now has to deal with the new dimension of terrorist incidents.

Nick Raynsford: I have given way to the hon. Gentleman, and I want to make progress.
	Yes, the result is that there are changes. I have accepted the removal of one appliance from a station in my constituency, having looked carefully at the figures, which show, as the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority demonstrated, that there would be a better prospect of saving lives by moving an appliance from one of the Greenwich stations to Sidcup because today's threats are different from those that existed in the 1940s, when a lot of the provisions were initially put in place. Any good service must seriously consider the need for change to take account of today's pressures and threats. We cannot ossify arrangements based on past patterns. Some change is necessary, but to talk about cuts is nonsense when the Government are increasing funding, as my hon. Friend the Minister has stressed.
	I want to talk about a little more about fire control, because some hon. Members made some misleading comments in their contributions on the issue. The fire control arrangements are designed to ensure that every fire authority in the country has the use of the best modern equipment to ensure that it can deploy resources as effectively as possible to meet whatever risks are faced. The new technology is not a leap into the unknown, as some people have suggested when referring to IT.
	Those who have any doubt about the technology should visit fire brigades such as Norfolk or Merseyside, where it is already used successfully. It allows a lot more than is possible in most other areas. It allows automatic identification of where the call is coming from. In Merseyside, that has now been extended to cover calls from mobile phones, which present an increasing pressure on the service. It also allows the automatic mobilisation of the appliances that are closest placed to respond and ensures that the crew in the cab will automatically receive a printout that identifies the hazards that they might encounter at the site that they are going to. Every fire authority in the country should benefit from those state-of-the-art arrangements. Fire control will ensure that they do.
	It has been suggested that local knowledge will be lost. Such knowledge has not been a major factor for fire control operations for many years since computerised gazetteering was introduced. Even in the existing authorities, it is unrealistic to expect a fire control operator to know the location of every village and town in a county, or every street in London, which already has a region-wide fire control operation. That is not possible. The new technology obviates that need because it presents the operator with a screen showing exactly where the call is coming from and where the appliance best placed to respond is. The red herring about local knowledge should be set aside.
	The other factor, which cannot be set aside, is the huge savings that are possible by introducing the new system across the country, with a smaller number of much more efficient control centres, thus allowing the savings to be ploughed back into fire prevention—exactly the thing that we know will save lives.
	The hon. Member for Meriden looks doubtful, but one of the statistics that I remember best from my period as the Minister responsible for the fire service is that half the people who die in domestic fires are dead before the fire brigade is alerted to the incident. However good they are—and they are very good at responding to incidents—and however quickly they get to the site, they cannot save those lives. Prevention is critical if those lives are to be saved. If, as a result of making savings on fire control, some of those resources can be used to put more smoke alarms into vulnerable people's homes and to carry out more fire prevention work in the first place, more lives will saved. This is a sensible policy that is designed to give the best results.

Nick Raynsford: I am afraid that the hon. Lady is exaggerating and not giving an accurate picture. I considered that argument very carefully, as any hon. Member would when presented with a proposal to remove an appliance, and I was convinced, when I had scrutinised and questioned the authority, that that was the right decision. Hon. Members should do that and not have a knee-jerk reaction and exaggerate, as the hon. Lady has done in implying that appliances are being taken out all over the west midlands. That is simply not the case.
	The Norfolk technology is good, but it did not extend to mobile phones when I saw it. Merseyside has moved on and its technology covers them. Clearly, we need the best modern technology, with the greatest capacity, installed throughout the country, but it would simply not be economic to do so on the basis of the existing 46 control centres. In many cases, they are not organised well to respond. They may have sufficient staff to respond to any possible incident, but many of them will not have much work to do for a lot of the time because of the relatively small volume of calls.
	For example, I looked at the figures for the Isle of Wight and I could see that, on average, a control room operator would expect to deal with probably no more than one incident in the entire shift on which they were on duty, because it is necessary to have sufficient staff on duty at any one time to cope with potential surges. That is simply not economic, and that is why the Isle of Wight has recognised that it cannot go on as an independent fire control centre.
	By contrast, London is already organised on a regional basis and the fire control centre covers a much larger number of calls, so it is operating on a far more cost-effective basis. It gives as good a service, if not a better one, and does so with significant savings that then allow more focus on fire safety. I talk to the chief of the London fire brigade from time to time and he strongly emphasises his service's real commitment to driving down the number of lives lost unnecessarily in fires. That commitment is the result of the Government's policy and of the potential for making savings through an intelligent approach towards facing today's risks.
	I thought that the speech of the hon. Member for Meriden and the Opposition motion were among the feeblest that I have come across in the House for a very long time. They indicate thinking that is stuck in the past and that shows no recognition of the failure of their abortive approach to reorganisation and a department of homeland security. They show no willingness to engage in the serious debate—not the token debate with Opposition motions that are not worth the paper they are written on—about how to improve the fire service, save lives and ensure that we have the best and most effective service.
	I hope that the House will reject the opportunistic Opposition motion and treat it with the contempt that it deserves.

Tim Boswell: I am grateful to have the opportunity to participate in the debate and to follow the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford). He at least has the benefit of knowing a good deal about this subject and made aspects of his case quite strongly. I would say to him and to the House that I take a pragmatic view of administrative structures; I want structures that work and that can handle and make the best use of modern technology in the interests of my constituents and others. We all move about the country, and we do or do not benefit from the situation in the area in which we happen to be at the time.
	I am in no sense, and never have been, what I would call a visceral anti-regionalist. I confirm the analysis of my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) on the genesis of the original Government office structure. I was Department of Trade and Industry Whip at the time that that was being thought about, and it was very much a matter of co-ordinating the national effort of the various Departments in the regions rather than seeking to take over or administer major aspects of service delivery. Indeed, I pursued that strategy as a Minister in relation to some educational components in the process and later, as an Agriculture Minister, I worked closely with a regional structure. Although such a strategy is not unthinkable, I take odds with it when it brings in large elements of additional bureaucracy and further structures that may not be appropriate and that may dilute the democratic structures in place. My interest is in sensible co-operation to achieve the right technical result, not in fitting the services to a regional template irrespective of the benefit or otherwise. That is what motivated me to want to participate in the debate, and I wish to make several points to support my view.
	I am genuinely concerned about the nature of the consultation. It is perhaps no good for us as Members of Parliament to get pompous about that, but it is something of an outrage that the major proposals for the fire and ambulance services, the wider health service and the police authorities were not notified to us by communications from Secretaries of State. Indeed, if the proposals were all part of an integrated strategy that the Government wish to pursue, they might at least have told us.
	The problem goes further. I genuinely believe that consultation can be beneficial and that it is sometimes a good idea to ask Members of Parliament, as the primary elected representatives for their constituencies, to participate in the process. That is as much in the Government's interest as it is in ours. I know that the Minister is an entirely reasonable fellow, and I hope that he will want to take some of these points on board.

Tim Boswell: I am grateful to my hon. Friend and Northamptonshire colleague for making that point. I am delighted that his voice reinforces my argument. That is exactly the concern that we have. It would not have been too difficult for Ministers to have approached us, and it might even have been in their interests to do so.
	Sometimes I wonder whether the Government consult only on the unimportant issues and that the level of consultation, or the time provided for it, is in inverse proportion to the importance of the subject. One of the problems is that we have not really seen a base of evidence, and it might be quite different for the different services. It would be useful to have an overview and independent analysis, not least because of the concerns being expressed powerfully in this debate.
	I wish to make a specific point. I know a little about resilience, because I wrote a paper on the subject as an 18-year-old that was sent to the Home Office in 1961. I suffer gravely from not having a BBC service that is particularly relevant to where I live. I live in Northamptonshire, but receive the service from Oxford and the regional service is from the south, so I see a lot about shipping in the Solent. If I am to be put into an east midlands mould, I will need an east midlands service if there is a difficulty or an emergency. That must be integrated right up to the borders of the services that operate in the area. I mention the point, because I think it is a consideration that the Minister is nodding at.
	The final point of the general considerations that I put to Ministers is my worry at the frenetic pace of change. I am conscious that others wish to speak and that we do not want to extend the debate to cover the whole field of public services, but I will say two words about health provision more generally in a moment. As the Government mature, I notice that they are going through a second or even third cycle of change. In these respects, they now seem to be quickening the pace, because they want to produce solutions or to save money, as colleagues have said. In other cases, the second or third reorganisation merely adds to the confusion of staff and service users alike. I think that it was Petronius who said nearly 2,000 years ago, "Every time that we were just about to get somewhere, they reorganised us and then we had to start the process all over again."

Tim Boswell: That is precisely the point. Many of us listen to FBU members and talk to watches in fire stations, and we can always learn from that process. I am sure that Ministers will want to pick up the concerns that are being vigorously expressed to my hon. Friend and me. All I am really saying to Ministers is, "Don't push your luck; don't take it too far; and don't rush it. Consult and think about it."
	I wish to expand briefly on that point in relation to the particular services. To pick up my hon. Friend's point, there is still a major problem with the fire services. Major, wrenching and difficult changes are already taking place for fire service provision, and they will be politically difficult as well difficult for the personnel involved.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone), who is not in the Chamber, eloquently explained the problems of Rushden fire station during a Westminster Hall debate yesterday. We have comparable problems in Daventry, because there is a move towards more part-time staffing to cover the station's work, which is causing considerable worry. If one superimposes the modernisation of control systems and the possible ultimate merger into a much wider regional structure on top of that, it is a matter of concern.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) clearly expressed some of the concerns in Northamptonshire about the police. Some of those concerns are practical, and I thought that the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich made something of a point about the matter. Even within the shire structure we do not always have perfection.
	It might amuse the House to hear that I was recently in one of my local police stations when a lorry driver who wanted to make a delivery came in. He said, "Where's Great Central Way?" I was a bit distracted because I was waiting for an appointment to discuss local policing matters, but when I became conscious that the chap at the desk was having difficulty, I said, "Why don't you try Woodford Halse? That's about 10 miles away." Of course that was exactly where the delivery was for—no one had spotted that the destination was not in the town itself.
	I can translate my point to a consideration of ambulances. There was a difficult case recently involving a person who was injured in a ploughing match that was taking place in a field on the Warwickshire-Northamptonshire county boundary. Of course the judge who went to the assistance of the person who had fallen did not know the postcode of the location, although he did have a mobile phone—that is relevant to our consideration. He telephoned for assistance, but the terrestrial ambulances of both counties failed to get there and the air ambulance had to be brought in. However, the air ambulance is already served co-operatively by the counties of Warwickshire and Northamptonshire.

Tim Boswell: It will be interesting to find out. I shall watch the situation, especially now that we have more varied representation in Northamptonshire. I shall refer to ambulance services in a moment.
	To conclude my remarks on the police authority, I do not want it to be suggested that I am not interested in democratic control. We have a police authority and there has recently been a change of administration in the county council at county hall. The question of who would control and assume the chair of the police authority was a real political issue, but at least it was determined locally—as it should be—rather than regionally.
	I made an intervention during the Minister's speech about the police. Their relationship with fire control rooms and, above all, the interoperability of services—I have some constituency involvement with Airwave—should be carefully watched. We need to ensure that the system works and Ministers should not over-claim what they are doing.
	My main worries relate to the health agenda, on which I shall speak a little more widely. We must examine the more general consideration of the reorganisation of the national health service. I know that the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), will wind up the debate. A strong functional primary care trust covers most of my area and I have been engaged for some time in fairly delicate negotiations to insert the other part of my area, which is brigaded with Oxfordshire—across the county boundary—into that trust, so it is extraordinary that after we appeared to be getting somewhere and consultation was offered, the whole thing is now up in the air. We might well end up with a county-wide trust, although we do not know that yet. We have had no news from the Department of Health, so we have had to work things out for ourselves, although I have written to the Secretary of State for Health on the matter.
	These things are not cost-free. My wife and I are involved with the re-provision of Brackley cottage hospital. My wife is a trustee and I am on one of the working groups. The matter might be worth an Adjournment debate one day, because it has gone on for 15 years. Every time that we seem to be getting somewhere, the NHS reorganises itself and the whole thing has to be started from scratch.
	The situation is especially vicious in relation to provision for our ambulance services. I know about the quality of Staffordshire's service and the Minister will be aware of the high quality of the Two Shires ambulance trust—my domestic NHS ambulance trust—covering Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. It is a three-star trust of long standing that is run extremely well. It is almost the one service in my constituency for which we are not on the edge of things, as it is headquartered in the village of Deanshanger. Although that is more or less in the centre of the trust's area and at the edge of my constituency, at least it is in my constituency, instead of a substantial distance away.
	The trust has worked especially well and should not be reorganised only for the reason that Ministers have decided that everything must be regionalised, with one bit going to south-east Buckinghamshire and another bit going to the east midlands. The trust would have to be dissolved before it could be reconstituted, so the operation would be doubly wrenching.
	It would be likely that the service for my area would be reconstituted into a trust with fewer stars, or a less good record, so there is extreme concern about the process, which is compounded by worries about the speed of implementation. I attended the trust's annual meeting at which its senior management and chairman were under the impression that it might be asked to merge from next April, or that a shadow committee would be established with the aim of an implementation date not far into the future. That raises practical concerns about the compatibility of radios and equipment carried on vehicles, and, of course, control functions. Above all, we cannot have a situation in which people in my constituency or those of other hon. Members do not get the service that they deserve simply because the component bits of the service do not talk to each other, which is the fundamental worry set out in the motion.
	My underlying concern is that decision making is being shifted from someone who is usually democratically accountable—or at any rate physically accessible in my county town—to a more distant, less accountable and less familiar regional body. It might be useful if I share with the House something of my personal situation, which is matched by that of many of my constituents.
	I have lived in a village called Aynho for nearly 40 years. It is in the extreme south-west of both my constituency and Northamptonshire, so we are virtually the end point of the east midlands. Indeed, for example, we are at the end point of the electricity grid network in the east midlands. It is a long way from the village to Cleethorpes. It is actually quite a long way from the village to Nottingham. My village is 60 miles from the House, but 100 miles from Nottingham. I am not sure that I would wish to substitute control from Northampton—or even London—with control from Nottingham. In fairness to the Minister, some of the journey from my village to Nottingham runs through my constituency. When one reaches the northern boundary of my constituency, one is halfway there, but Nottingham is still a long way away.
	Let me explain how things work operationally. There are four postal regions in my constituency: first, Northampton, which is in the east midlands; secondly, Coventry, which is in the west midlands; thirdly, Milton Keynes—we have had real problems with BT employees not being able to recognise the post codes of people from there who ring in, because they go through to the wrong control room—and, fourthly, Oxfordshire. I live 300 yd within my constituency and have an Oxfordshire postcode, as have about 20 per cent. of my constituents. Oxfordshire is in the south-east, as is Milton Keynes. There are huge operational difficulties, including those that relate to the focus of operations. I touched on some of those. My area is not Greater London, a unitary or the west midlands. The pattern is complex and dispersed. People already live at great and extended distances from services.
	There is something else to consider. We formed part of the Deputy Prime Minister's expansion plans and growth areas under the Milton Keynes and south midlands study, but that involves three regions—the south-east, the east midlands and eastern. Whatever Ministers come up with has to be sensitive to such considerations.
	My other access route is to go from Milton Keynes to Crick in my constituency, which is a 25-minute drive down the old Roman road of Watling street. I move effortlessly from the south-east area of influence to the west midlands. Again, no regional template is sensitive to that. We have held the line of having an element of county control and involvement, although even that is sometimes distant. However, the situation is uneasy. My fear is that the drive for regionalisation or centralisation will make it worse.
	The irony is that I have the great privilege and delight to live in the middle of England in a very pleasant area, yet my constituents and I face the paradox of also living on the edge of every service. They are uneasy about that and, frankly, increasingly alarmed, concerned and fed up.

Ronnie Campbell: My constituency is in the south of Northumberland and bridges on to the conurbations of Tyneside. At least 80,000 people live there. The next-door constituency of Wansbeck has about the same number. This part of Northumberland is fairly well populated compared with the rest, which is sparsely populated.
	The county council and the chief fire officer have decided not merely to withdraw fire pumps, but to close fire stations. The proposal is to close two fire stations in my area that have been in existence for years. The Cramlington station covers the new town, which is a big area. It is on the edge of the town for the people to call on its services at any time. The old town of Blyth has a population of at least 39,000, and its fire station is also to close. There will be no retained fire pumps in those areas. Instead, they will be five miles upland in Wansbeck.
	The plan is also to close the fire station at Morpeth, which has about 27,000 people. The station is in the town itself. Ashington fire station will close, too. It is on the edge of the town, which has about 26,000 people, if Newbiggin by the Sea and Bedlington are included. However, the chief fire officer, Mr. Heffler, says that he will build two state-of-the-art fire stations by the private finance initiative. We need to do our sums on PFI to see whether we save money or not. What we have come up with is that we will not save money and that the scheme will cost the council tax payers big time.
	Never mind that, though, because Mr. Heffler is going to build the two big fire stations. One will be out in the country in Pegswood, which will cover Morpeth, Ashington, Newbiggin by the Sea and Bedlington and the other will be five miles outside my constituency to cover my 80,000 constituents. The idea is to regionalise the fire service and then to introduce a Bill to privatise it. That is the motive. I could say that the Tories will not privatise it, but I think that they will. It is a big worry.
	Many years ago, when I was a young councillor, a guy was put in charge of the Northumberland ambulance service. Laurie Caper closed all the ambulance stations around Blyth Valley and Ashington, except for a couple of big ones. All the ambulances were put in those two stations. At times, they could not get through the traffic to the stations and response times were extended. Years later, instead of billeting ambulances somewhere on a roadside, which the ambulance service did for a long time—the ambulances were told where to wait for a call—it decided to put them in the fire stations in Blyth, Cramlington and so on. It served a purpose because we got a fire station back, but that is all up in the air now. Where will the ambulance service go in Northumberland? It is a big worry.
	The Government say that it is up to the county council. As far as they are concerned, it is in charge and they have nothing to do with it. I have sent the Minister a letter and a map outlining the problem. Response times will increase. Perhaps the chief fire office is going to put two jet-propelled rockets on the side of the fire engines to get them to emergencies in Blyth quicker.
	We are losing out. Hundreds have signed a petition in Blyth because people say, "Wait a minute. Our fire station looks after 39,000." That may not be many compared with other constituencies. Hon. Members should tell me whether I am getting a bit of luxury. Is it acceptable for one or two fire appliances to cover 100,000 people? That is what we have had in the south-east of Northumberland.
	On top of that, Mr. Heffler wants to cut 28 full-time firemen as part of the regionalisation. Those will not be redundancies, but natural wastage. He says, "But behold. We are going to have retained firemen." Well, that is all right. We know what retained firemen do. However, a member of the Fire Brigades Union told me last week that they have retained firemen in Ponteland, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson). An incident happened, but the retained firemen could not get to it because they were off working somewhere else. The fire engine from Blyth had to go all the way up to Ponteland to fight the incident. We are closing stations, removing pumps and getting rid of full-time firefighters. We are expected to rely on retained firemen, but we cannot because they do other jobs. We must look at that problem.
	I do not have a problem with other aspects of what the Government are doing. I understand that we need to modernise, but we cannot take vital services away from the public. It is always dodgy because if they are used to them being there, they feel safe. The fire service does a lot of other work, such as putting in fire alarms. Not so long ago it put a sprinkler into my mother's house. That is good and should be encouraged.
	The recent national audit of Northumberland fire brigade gave it ratings of either excellent or good. It did not get fair or poor on anything. Although that service was excellent it was cut, and there will be only two fire stations. I would like to know what the Minister thinks about that. When he digs out my letter—it has been in his office for three weeks—he should investigate the situation. He should not rely on the chief fire officer, who will produce a biased report, as he did at the recent public meeting, but should seek the opinion of the Fire Brigades Union. I attended that public debate in New Hartley, and the chief fire officer lost hands-down. If I was not convinced before I went to the meeting I was when I left, because the FBU made a good case. Northumberland county council is making a grave mistake, and I urge Heffler to go back to where he came from—Noddyland, where he produced his Noddy policy.

Simon Burns: I am grateful for that guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Lady compromised by deciding to disagree with the motion and the Government amendment. She sought, in an extremely cheap way, to attack the Conservative decision to support the FBU, to which the motion refers, for trying to stop regionalisation of control centres. I have to tell the hon. Lady that in the grown-up world real people with depth and maturity support the point of view they believe in, whoever expresses it. We will support the FBU if we believe that its cause is right. We will support an improved service of fire protection for our constituents if that means opposing regionalisation. We do not blow in the wind and we do not take a view because we think that it might enhance our popularity. We take a view because we believe that it is right and is in the best interests of the people who send us here every four or five years.
	I have grave concerns about the Government proposals. I am not convinced by the Minister's argument that they will save money that can be reinvested in the service to improve it for our constituents. I believe that the proposals are crude, and are part of an overall agenda for regionalisation. The money that will be saved will not necessarily be reinvested pound for pound in the fire services or the ambulance service. It will go into the Chancellor's depleted coffers to help tackle the growing economic crisis in the public finances. My county of Essex has a population of 1.5 million, and is one of the most densely populated areas in the country. We are extremely fortunate, as we have an excellent fire service, and I pay tribute to the dedicated men and women who work day in, day out to protect us and provide the security and safety that all citizens deserve.
	The system works. The control centre is located in Essex, and the people who work in it are extremely familiar with the county. They can do their job to the highest standard, and that is what the service should offer. If it is to be submerged into an eastern region including Suffolk, Norfolk and perhaps Northamptonshire and Hertfordshire that quality of service, local knowledge and the ability to respond effectively and efficiently to calls for help will be diminished because the area covered will be too great. My motto has always been "If it ain't broke don't try to fix it." I urge the Government to follow that motto, even at this late stage. They should display a little more humility. The Minister knows what he is talking about, as he has intimate knowledge of the fire services, having worked for them. That is unusual, however, and I believe that the policy was dreamed up and imposed by civil servants in Whitehall to fit a wider agenda of regionalisation and to try to save money on the side.
	Essex ambulance service, which is first-rate, is experiencing similar problems. It has an extremely good chief executive who is sensitive to the county's changing needs and demands, and who will make sure that the service and its resources are used to maximum effect so that ambulances are available to respond to accidents, to perform other functions and to offer an excellent service to the people of Essex, including my constituents. However, it faces the melting pot, because there are proposals to regionalise it. If the argument is that there are other ambulance services in the eastern region that are not as efficient and effective as that service, it is not right that all the services should be merged and brought down to the lowest common denominator. They should all be brought up to the highest standard. However, it is not clear that that will be achieved by putting them all together in a single mammoth organisation. I am not making a party political point, because there have been local government reorganisations under Governments of all persuasions. Some of those reorganisations were motivated by the tenet that bigger is better but after the ensuing problems and upheavals, and given the grievances of people who felt detached from the services they were using, it was recognised that that was not the right approach. As a result, the clock was turned back, and people sought to return to the original arrangements. If the Government are determined to pursue their proposals to the bitter end, I fear that they will destroy an efficient, effective service. They will not be here in a few years' time to make the decisions, but we will have to pick up the pieces and reverse the process by trying to return to the original service that met people's needs.
	In conclusion, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden for securing today's debate, which is our only meaningful opportunity to debate the issue on behalf of our constituents on the Floor of the House. Both Ministers on the Front Bench are eminently reasonable, and when they are on their own and are not being bullied or pressurised by their political peers and civil servants, they should think again about this debate and be man and woman enough to admit that maybe they have not got it completely right and that maybe the policy is not necessarily the right way forward. They should be prepared to be magisterial and think again, and my constituents would be extremely grateful if they were to do so.

John McDonnell: As secretary of the FBU parliamentary group, I refer hon. Members to my declaration in the Register of Members' Interests. I do not object to hon. Members on both sides of the House relating views that they may have heard from FBU members.
	As an aside, the quality of speeches, including the speech by the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) and the intervention by the Minister, has been high.
	I thank the Government for the way in which they have drafted the amendment, because I have spent this week looking for something that I can support—I can support the amendment, provided that the ministerial winding-up speech does not contradict it.
	All hon. Members agree with the outline business case statement that the existing arrangements for delivering core services, including call handling and dispatch functions, within the fire service are perceived to be excellent, and almost every hon. Member who has spoken has congratulated the staff and the service on how they currently operate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) has related the strength of feeling after 7 July about the excellent performance of our emergency services in London.
	If we are to move forward, we must ensure that do so carefully and that we take the professionals with us. The outline business case urges caution:
	"There is no other example of a regional service being provided in this way."
	The reform is among the most novel ever seen in this country, and it is important that we get the history right. It is true that the Bain report did not recommend regionalisation, and it is also true that Mott Macdonald made two recommendations—its first recommendation included 27 centres; its second recommendation included nine centres. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich can correct me, if I am wrong, but I thought that Mott Macdonald's first recommendation was for 27 centres.

James Gray: It is pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and to find myself agreeing with so much of what he said. No one would accuse me of being a fellow traveller with the Fire Brigades Union, but this is the second time on which I find myself campaigning alongside it. We recently campaigned together to prevent the much unwanted privatisation of the defence fire service, and I am glad to say that jointly we were able to persuade the Government to back off. I hope that on this occasion, too, we and the FBU will be able to persuade the Government to back off from proposals that are demonstrably unwelcome to ordinary people and throughout the fire service.
	No county in England is as a good an example of stealth regionalisation as our county of Wiltshire. We have heard today from many hon. Friends and Labour Members who feel that they are being regionalised unwittingly. In Wiltshire, we have an added conundrum. It is only two years since Her Majesty the Queen came to Devizes to open the state-of-the-art joint control service centre—the latest thing. One could phone into it for the fire service, police and ambulance and they would all turn up in good time. There are strong arguments for that. I personally was rather opposed, because it meant job losses in my constituency, in Chippenham, but I was persuaded none the less that it was the state of the art. The Government told us that the system was to be spread out across the nation. It cost £2.5 million to set up this beautiful new building, and there were significant difficulties in getting it going, but after much fighting the Government finally forced it through.
	What is to happen now? All that state-of-the-art, new Labour so-called fantastic new service is to be swept away by three changes. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister announced the other day that it is going to do away with the fire control centre in Devizes and replace it with a remote, and, no doubt, much bigger one in Taunton—presumably at enormous cost. The Minister might like to respond to a detailed point, namely, that the lease on the building in Devizes runs until 2014, and the first escape date in the contract is 2012. If the contract is broken through the removal of the fire service from the control centre, the Government will face a substantial penalty clause. Will the Minister confirm whether the £988 million cost that we heard about includes the gigantic cost that will be involved in breaching that contract? I imagine that the same will apply to Gloucestershire, where a similar centre is being set up.
	Next, we are told that because Wiltshire ambulance service is not as good as it ought to be, although it seems pretty good to me, it is to be amalgamated with Gloucestershire, which is apparently first class—that presumably means that there is a risk that we might be averaging down rather than up—and with something called the Avon ambulance service. I seem to recall that my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) abolished Avon some 10 or 15 years ago. Why on earth we still have something called Avon ambulance service, and why it should be amalgamated with the excellent Wiltshire ambulance service, I cannot imagine.
	That brings me on to a side curiosity. It seems like no time at all since I sat in the modest little health authority headquarters in Devizes, where I was told by the excellent chairman of the Wiltshire health authority that it was no longer big enough. The Wiltshire health authority was to be done away with, to be replaced with primary care groups, which became primary care trusts. Then a thing called the Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire strategic health authority was established, although I cannot imagine what the heck it is supposed to be for. Now we hear that all the primary care trusts are to be brought together so that we end up with a body that is identical to the Wiltshire health authority. Sitting on top of that, we have—I went to visit it during the recess—a huge office, with hundreds of people employed in it, called the Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire strategic health authority. Nobody knows what on earth it does or what it is for, but I could not find a place in the car park because of all the BMWs parked there. Hundreds of civil servants were sitting in that great office doing who knows what. We now have the Wiltshire health authority just as it was when I became an MP eight years ago, but with a fat layer of bureaucracy on top of it. That is precisely what would happen if we allowed the so-called regionalisation to go ahead. It would save no money and mean only a gigantic increase in bureaucracy.
	The fire service has been pulled out—it is going to Taunton. Apparently, the ambulance service will be pulled out. It is said that we are not yet considering a regional ambulance control centre, but when I saw the chief executive during the recess, he would not give me a guarantee that it was not a logical consequence. We may well end up with something called the Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire call centre.

James Gray: My hon. Friend makes a good point. The only reason for doing such a thing is an ideological determination that big is beautiful. Labour loves reorganisation, hierarchies, structures and committees. We like good delivery of first-class services locally. My hon. Friend's point brings me to proposals about the police service.
	In Wiltshire, we have the best police service in England, in the sense that our detection rate is extremely high and we have one of the lowest crime rates. Our proudest boast is that no murder has gone undetected in the county since the police service was set up in 1834. I believe that it was the first county police service to be established by my predecessor, Mr. Peel.
	What do we have now? We are talking about doing away with the excellent Wiltshire police service because the service is apparently not big enough to cover anti-terrorism and all the other matters that the Minister mentioned. Surely we can get around that problem. Four officers in the Wiltshire police service deal with anti-terrorism. Surely they could happily co-operate with the four in Gloucestershire, the four in Dorset and the four in Somerset, without the proposed gigantic structural reorganisation. We could find ways of co-operating across borders.
	I want the Minister to deal with a specific point about cross-border co-operation. If there is to be useful cross-border co-operation between services, whether fire, police or ambulance, why does it have be based on the Government's pre-set regional structure? For example, in Dorset, surely it would be reasonable for the police services of Bournemouth and Poole, which effectively constitute one built-up area, to co-operate. However, the one thing that the Government have laid out plainly is that the borders of the pre-set regions must be adhered to. There must be no cross-border co-operation. If the police in Bournemouth are caught co-operating with the police in Poole, my goodness, there would be all sorts of trouble. The Home Secretary would be down on them like a ton of bricks. However, if the police in Bournemouth co-operate with the police in the Scilly Isles, that counts as a good scheme according to the new Labour notion.
	If we are considering the convenience of delivering emergency services, surely we should examine the geographical areas in which it is convenient to deliver them. If the south-west of England exists, it is Devon, Cornwall and the Scilly Isles. The notion that one can go from Tewkesbury to the Scilly Isles and from Cricklade to Poole and call all that the south-west—if one stuck a drawing pin in Tewkesbury and turned the map around, the Scilly Isles would land in the city of Glasgow—is ridiculous. We in north Wiltshire ain't in the south-west of England. We may be in Wessex and the west country but we do not want to be in the south-west. We do not want our police service to be done away with in favour of some generalised south-west police force.
	If we add to the regionalisation of the fire service that of the ambulance service, the police service, an astonishing series of changes in the health service, which constitute a form of regionalisation, and the nationalisation of some other county services, it amounts to the abolition of county government in England. It is no less than stealth abolition of our counties.
	If one is interested in accountability, localism and allowing local people to determine the sort of services that they want, the best possible structure in which to do that is the county. The Labour party may not like it but I love the county of Wiltshire and I pledge to do what I can to fight to prevent its abolition by the mob opposite.

Mark Harper: It is noticeable that the Government are currently somewhat lacking Back-Bench support.
	The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) has left the Chamber but he made some cheap remarks about whether this was an appropriate place to hold a debate. The Floor of the House of Commons is entirely the right place for the debate. If it were not for my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman), we would not be having the debate and discussing matters of such great concern to our constituents.
	My first point is about regions. As someone who represents a rural constituency in a rural county, I was struck by the fact that many of the contributions from the Government's supporters were London-centric. Providing emergency services in a densely populated capital city is different from providing them in a sparsely populated rural county. Clearly, it will be more expensive to provide the services in a rural county because of travelling times, the quality of the roads, response times and so on. That is evident to anyone who examines the matter.
	I support my hon. Friends' comments about the sense of the regions and whether it would be sensible to allow co-operation across regional boundaries. The Forest of Dean constituency is on the Welsh border and on the border between the south-west region and the west midlands region. If there is to be co-operation, there is a great deal of sense in allowing it to happen across regional borders when that is appropriate. Moving to a regional structure appears to make that more difficult rather than easier.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) made a point about computer systems and postcoding. In my constituency, several postcodes cross borders, especially the Welsh border. Several organisations, including Government organisations such as the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, are sloppy about their use of postcode information. Many of my constituents who live on the Gloucestershire side of the border and have Newport postcodes find that Government organisations assume that an NP postcode means that they are in Wales and they get bilingual documents. That is not a heartening example. If Government organisations are sloppy about their use of data, it is not a serious problem when someone who does not want one gets a bilingual driving licence, but it is tremendously serious if a fire response takes a long time and lives are consequently lost. I ask the Minister to ensure that, whatever happens with technology, some of the problems that affect borders are tackled and that the technology can cope with that and does not make assumptions about postcoding and geographical locations.

Martin Horwood: The hon. Gentleman might know that his comments about the tri-service model are supported by the Audit Commission report produced in July 2005, which listed the establishment of the tri-service centre in Gloucester as a key strength of the fire and rescue service and stated:
	"The Fire Authority is consistently providing value for money, with one of the lowest costs per head of population in the country. When compared to its family group, best value indicators show there is good performance in many areas . . . There has been notable achievement against its high-level strategic objectives including the new Tri-Service Centre".
	The following month, the abolition was announced. Is not that particularly galling?

Mark Harper: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his timely intervention, which leads me to my next point on the merger proposals for the police service.
	The report produced by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary, which has driven the Government's thinking on this issue, makes the point that small rural forces are not very good, on the whole, at dealing with level 2 criminality—serious and organised crime—and at responding to terrorism. However, I understand that Her Majesty's inspectorate's last report on Gloucestershire found that
	"Gloucestershire Constabulary has a comprehensive Level 2 capability, including surveillance . . . dedicated source handlers and force intelligence best practice".
	Indeed, the National Crime Squad has adopted Gloucestershire's profiles as best practice, and has also said that Gloucestershire has been able to deal with terrorism investigations successfully, notably the recent Badat case.
	It is entirely laudable and sensible to have more co-operation and collaboration between forces, and it would be much better if that were done on a bottom-up basis whereby forces collaborated regardless of regional boundaries, where it made sense to do so. It does not seem sensible to impose a one-size-fits-all, top-down model.

Michael Penning: I fully accept the Minister's comments. I understand that it can take time to get things to happen when he is dealing with lots of bureaucrats, and it is the bureaucratic mess that I am particularly worried about. The Minister knows a lot about the fire service from his history of working in it, but I am not sure how many of the people who surround him in the civil service in London understand what is happening on the ground.
	The Minister joined the fire service a little before I did. At that time, control people in the whole-time stations knew the topography of the local area; they knew what was going on. If someone called the fire brigade, the call went directly to their local whole-time fire station. That service was moved, however, from fire stations to divisional control centres. Why? It was to save money. The service stayed there for a while, where it worked pretty well, although not as well as it had in the stations. Guess what? To save money, we then moved it from the divisional control centres to the brigade control centres, which is where it operates from today. That has worked, because a lot of the local knowledge went to the control centres. It was possible for people who lived in the county and worked in those control centres to move up in that way. Most of the people who work in the control centres in Hertfordshire and in Essex—where I was a full-time firemen—moved in that way, and some of them had put in 20 or 30 years' service.
	We are now talking about moving to nine regional control centres. If this is all about saving money—and it is; the Minister has already said that he wants to invest it elsewhere—perhaps we could just have one control centre. Or perhaps we could do as the banks have done and have a call centre in Delhi or Bombay. If it is not about knowledge and only about technology, the proposal for nine centres does not make sense. It must therefore be about what is safe for the public and what works.
	Like many other Members, I have grave concerns about IT projects. A Labour Member commented earlier from a sedentary position that IT projects went wrong under Conservative Governments, too, which is perfectly correct—they have been going wrong since time immemorial. In relation to this IT project, the key is lives being saved. That is why I fundamentally oppose the project, and why the FBU opposes it, as it understands the situation on the ground much better than any bureaucrat in Westminster.
	I want briefly to consider some of the modernisations that have—or, rather, have not—been introduced. The former Minister for Local and Regional Government, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) commented from a sedentary position that this is not about cuts. If you come to Hertfordshire, however, you will see that Bovingdon and Radlett fire stations are being closed. At least one pump is being removed from Watford, and four full-time firemen from Hemel Hempstead. When we asked the chief fire officer why that had happened, his reply was that he must save £500,000 so that he can finance the fire prevention measures—of which I am wholeheartedly in favour—that are not being funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. We are therefore having cuts—the provision is not being relocated, as some Labour Members were saying, but is vanishing.
	The largest town in Hertfordshire is Hemel Hempstead—I am pleased that the Ministers of State from the Department of Health are in the Chamber, as the hospital is also subject to massive cuts, which perhaps I will delve into in a moment—and it has two pumps. The most accident-prone part of the M1 in southern England, junction 8—it is fantastic that it is going to be widened, and I hope that we will not have as many accidents in future—is covered by the pump at Bovingdon, and Bovingdon station is being closed. I take to heart the comments made about retained fire stations, and in a perfect world we would not have any retained or part-time stations. In this imperfect world, however, we have community-based fire stations that serve and are manned by their local community, and we should praise people who are willing to risk their lives for not a lot of money to be retained firemen.
	The other week, I attended Dacorum borough council's scrutiny committee and listened to the commander of Bovingdon fire station, who has served as a community fireman for 30 years and who was almost in tears because he knows that the closure of that station will cost lives. One of the reasons that that is possible is that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has changed the rules and allowed a longer time of up to 10 minutes for the appliances to arrive at residences after a call is initiated. It was suggested earlier that most people are dead before the call is made, but many are not. The quicker that we can get the appliances to them, the quicker we can get them out, and those of us who have served know how important that is. If it is the case that most people are dead before the fire engine is called, we might as well turn the blue lights off and just drive. As a former driver of a fire engine, however, I could never do that. I would like to try to drive a fire engine in your constituency and get the distance without the—

Michael Penning: Yes, it is like the learning process for people in call centres.
	If we take away local knowledge and work only on the basis of costs, and say that we need much better fire prevention and smoke alarms fitted but do not fund it, we must close fire stations. Closing Bovingdon station will save £90,000. When I asked the assistant chief constable who did the presentation what the reasons were behind it, he said, "Sir, you have to ask the local politicians about that." I did, and the answer was that Hertfordshire must save £500,000 from the fire budget; otherwise it will not meet the criteria set by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
	Recently, I, like colleagues on both sides of the House, met representatives of my ambulance trust. I asked them whether they were looking forward to the mooted amalgamation. There was silence. Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire have a fantastic ambulance service. I told them that there will be massive changes to the health service in Hertfordshire. I am not ashamed to mention that I and my constituents are very worried about closures of acute services at Hemel Hempstead hospital, which means that we will need more ambulances to move more people, on a blue light, from my constituency to Watford, the only available accident and emergency department, which happens to be full at the moment and on red alert, so it has not been able to take anyone at all recently. The ambulance trust said, "We have asked for more money, Mr. Penning, but none is forthcoming." I ask the Minister responding to the debate to say where the extra money will come from. Are we going to get money not only for the reorganisation, but for more ambulances, so that we can move people around this "big is beautiful" health service that seems to be developing?
	I turn finally to the police. I in no way take a draconian view on this issue, and I am not completely opposed to any amalgamation of constabularies. As I said this week in my local paper, if such amalgamation puts more bobbies on the beat and leads to a better police force and fewer bureaucrats and administrators, we will consider it. But we can do so only if the relevant evidence is put before us. All too often, we are getting "bounced", be it on fire services, fire control centres, hospitals, ambulances or the police. The lack of information—

Rosie Winterton: Naturally, I do not agree with the motion, but I am pleased that the debate has given us the opportunity to pay tribute once again to the work of our emergency services, whose dedication and commitment are second to none. As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said—and his words were echoed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) and by several Opposition Members—the events of 7 July gave us a tragic reminder of the invaluable work performed by the people who staff our emergency services. I am sure that the whole House wants to pay tribute to them.
	This debate has also allowed us to discuss how to shape our emergency services for the 21st century, and for all the new demands and challenges that we face. It is true that our police, fire and ambulance services are all undergoing change. That is not only because we want high-quality local services, but because we need to have emergency services that can deal with major incidents, whether terrorist attacks, chemical incidents, major transport accidents or natural disasters such as the floods that we have seen all too often in recent years. All the evidence and lessons learned over the past few years point to the fact that major incidents require a co-ordinated response across local boundaries. Specialist equipment is often required and personnel from a wider geographical area may need to be called upon. It has to be possible to mobilise at short notice resources from outside the immediate area. Disasters do not respect local authority boundaries and we have to have emergency services that respond to that fact.
	As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said about the fire service, we need to upgrade our communication and control centres so that they can deal as effectively as possible with major incidents. He also said that, in July, the London fire brigade showed the importance of being able to respond at a regional level. It is generally accepted that a similar strategic approach is necessary throughout the country.

Rosie Winterton: If my hon. Friend had been in his place earlier, he would know that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary made it clear that the proposals were all about being responsive at local level, as well as good strategic co-ordination. They are not about changes to front-line ambulance service provision. Local innovations and successes would not only be preserved, but shared to benefit all. This is an opportunity to lift the quality of the lowest and set a high benchmark.
	The hon. Member for Meriden asked why we have proposed the changes. The answer is simple: we want better, faster services that are more responsive to major incidents. It is extraordinary that the Opposition choose to denigrate the fact that we are ensuring that our emergency services can respond as effectively as possible at regional and neighbourhood level.
	What did the Conservative party offer the emergency services and the public when it was in power? Crime doubled, the NHS was run into the ground and the fire services, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich so eloquently put it, were left to stagnate with no attempt to modernise or invest in them to make them fit for the 21st century. The Conservatives learned no lessons at the last general election, because the patient's passport would have taken £1.2 billion out of the NHS—almost exactly the cost of the ambulance service in England.
	The debate has once again underlined the fact that it is the Government who are in tune with what the public want—policies that the public endorsed at the general election—which is modern, up-to-date emergency services that are properly equipped, with proper training, and properly co-ordinated to save lives and protect the public.
	Once again the Opposition are swimming against the tide of public opinion and fighting the battles of the past. I urge my hon. Friends to vote against the motion and for the Government.

Oliver Letwin: The right hon. Lady asks how I can possibly have any interests. I am not sure that I do have any interests, as a matter of fact, but I always try to follow the path of greatest assurance.
	The problem of climate change is manifestly global. I do not think that anyone on either side of the House is in any doubt that the problem requires global solutions. It is also clear that the Prime Minister has grasped the global nature of the problem. It would be fair to pay him the tribute of saying that since Lady Thatcher's speech many years ago, he is probably the person in British politics who has most signally grasped that fact. What is more—this might not necessarily give some of my colleagues great satisfaction—I must say that I think that the Prime Minister is right that we will not make significant global progress until and unless we realise what the Americans, Chinese, Indians and Russians are clearly now recognising: the solution to the problem of increasing carbon emissions does not lie in trying to persuade the entirety of the inhabitants of the globe to live like monks in the middle ages, or in trying to pretend away the serious problems of competitive advantage if some economies engage in certain activities, while others engage in others. In short, there is no doubt at all that the United States will not participate unless and until China, India, Russia, Brazil—probably—and possibly Japan are fully locked into a process. So far, I agree with the Prime Minister.
	I must say, however, that I read with some dismay the Prime Minister's remarks—not made here in the UK, of course, but in the States—suggesting that he had abandoned the hope of some years hence moving from a stage at which there was a joint and laudable effort to introduce new technologies to one at which there could be a wider second Kyoto—although I care not whether it would be called that—that would represent a much wider binding agreement across the great majority of the economies of the world that targets would be achieved for carbon reduction. We still need to strive towards that goal, so I hope that the Secretary of State will be able to relieve my anxiety and let us know that the Prime Minister's remarks have been misinterpreted and that although he does not believe—as I do not—that there will be a second Kyoto agreement in short order, he nevertheless hopes to negotiate such a universal binding agreement in due course. If that is the Prime Minister's view, we share it.

Oliver Letwin: The sad demise of combined heat is only one element of many contributing to this sorry tale. Others include the lack of micro-generation and the fact that boilers are not being replaced with micro-generators; the difficulty of installing small domestic windmills on people's houses; the relationship to the electricity supply industry; the lack of enforcement of building regulations; the fact that we are building large numbers of environmentally unfriendly houses; and the fact that our transport system does not yet have a renewable transport fuel obligation despite years of inquiry. Those factors, and many other things besides, have contributed to the problem, and each of them is important.
	I want to discuss an overarching question: how can we—as a country, as three political parties and as the Government or a potential alternative Government—ensure that we do not have debates in the House of Commons for the next 50 years in which anybody who is honest must stand at the Dispatch Box and say, "The situation is getting worse rather than better"? That is not a partisan point, because many hon. Members on both sides of the House agree with it.
	I could suggest to my party that at the next election we should address the problem, to which the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) rightly alluded, of our not being seen to be involved in environmental affairs, by adopting a partisan position. The way things are going, nothing would be easier than adopting that approach. We could spend a lot of time picking holes in the Government's record, but it would not be productive.
	Today, the hon. Member for Lewes and I are proposing a productive agreement involving the Secretary of State and the Government, because we have an opportunity to agree on some things. The opportunity exists, because we already agree on a subset of those issues—for some time, all three political parties have been signed up to the idea of reducing emissions in this country by 60 per cent. between now and 2050, which is a considerable rock on which to found much else.
	It cannot be rationally asserted that three political parties in a mature democracy have signed up to a target for 2050 without it following that those three parties can agree year-by-year targets between now and 2050. We cannot get to a 2050 target by waiting until 2049, and we all know that there must be a path between here and there. The nature of the path, which will involve energy security, economic progress and available technologies, is immensely complex, and much room is available for discussion, which should commence now.
	There are good grounds for supposing that we can go further, because we can all agree to the blindingly obvious. Just as the hon. Member for Normanton (Ed Balls), who intervened earlier, was right to establish the Monetary Policy Committee as an independent body to help to countervail against the natural tendency in a democracy for Governments to take short-term decisions, which may have bad long-term consequences, on interest rates for electoral reasons, so it is clear that in the domain of climate change and environmental policy, a distinct tendency exists in our or any other democracy for Governments to take a short-term position that leads to long-term deficiencies.
	Just as the MPC corrected that effect, we need an independent monitoring body to engage in a probabilistic analysis along the lines of the MPC's trumpet-shaped curves. Such a body would come to Parliament every year, when it would state whether on present policy the Government of the day have a 50 per cent. chance, a 90 per cent. chance or a 2 per cent. chance of meeting the year-by-year targets to which all three parties would have signed up in the world that I am gesturing towards. That does not mean that the Government would immediately have to take specific action—nobody can remove the democratic power that lies with a Government—but they would be sorely embarrassed if they did not take actions that led to such a body predicting a high likelihood of meeting the year-by-year targets.
	In the course of our joint endeavours during the past 24 hours, the hon. Member for Lewes has made the good point that a Government who increased the probability of meeting those targets, as assessed by the independent monitor, and who knew that both of the other major political parties were also signed up to the process, would be immune from petty politicking, which would otherwise go on all too easily, along the lines of "You are causing a cost for my constituents. I can make some political capital out of this, notwithstanding the fact that I know that the policy is right, if we are to meet the targets in the long run." That would be prohibited, so to speak, because all three parties would be conjoined in a consensual approach to these matters. That is very desirable result.

Edward Balls: I am interested in the right hon. Gentleman's analogy about independent advice. Back in 1998, the Government went to the president of the CBI—who, I am sure you would agree, is not at all a partisan political figure—and asked him to look at the issue of climate change. He recommended, independently of Government, that we should move towards emissions trading in the long term, but in the short to medium term we should have the climate change levy, with negotiated agreements, and supported by the CBI. For partisan political reasons, the right hon. Gentleman and his party opposed it. How can he now, with any credibility, lecture us about not being partisan?

Oliver Letwin: The tone of voice that I was attempting to adopt was not one of lecturing the hon. Gentleman but of making a positive proposal about a way in which the three parties might go forward. If he wants to persist in the rather paltry business of continually defending a partly defensible and partly indefensible position in relation to a tax that has had some desirable effects but others that are unfortunately not so desirable, that is a pity. Rather than worrying about all that, we have an opportunity to do something that is of extraordinary significance not only for the way in which this country behaves but in giving us the ability to engage in moral leadership globally. Unless we make serious strides, not backwards but forwards, in reducing carbon, we cannot lead globally to anything like the extent that the Prime Minister rightly wants.

Oliver Letwin: I have undoubtedly made myself insufficiently clear, given that I failed earlier to persuade the right hon. Lady of my point. What I meant to say is that there needs to be a body that predicts—in the way that the Bank of England predicts, through its probabilistic analyses—the chance of the Government of the day's meeting a set of year-by-year targets relating to the policies of the time. That is a very specific and extraordinarily important role that is not based on current monitoring, but which looks forward to 2050.

Margaret Beckett: I think that we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. I am sure that the hon. Lady is up to speed with these issues, even though she was not in the House when the Government produced our energy White Paper some two years ago. We said then that it would be most unwise to close down the nuclear option. However, if that option had to be reconsidered, we also committed ourselves to a very thorough examination of all the implications of such a course of action. We also committed to publishing a special White Paper on the matter, but I assure her that we are not quite at that point at present.
	I have referred to the huge difficulties faced by China and India, but they are only two of the countries that demonstrate the other side of the coin. The potential silver lining to the vast cloud that has been described is the immense opportunity available to them to make use of assistance to develop in a sustainable manner, and the immense opportunity that those vast markets provide for UK and EU businesses.
	Those countries, however, demonstrate another aspect that is absolutely pertinent to the prospects for international agreement. As I said a moment ago, China and India have massive needs, and those needs are, and will remain, the priority for their peoples. They are also proud and independent states, but they are only two among the 189 countries sending delegations to the Montreal meeting of the UN convention on climate change. I shall be frank with the House: to attempt to lecture or instruct those 189 countries about what they should do in respect of climate change—let alone to prescribe how they should go about doing it— would be grossly impertinent and probably utterly counterproductive.
	A worrying tendency is emerging in the public debate on this topic—I do not accuse the right hon. Member for West Dorset in this respect, as he showed no signs of it today—to take all these matters for granted. I therefore remind the House that Montreal will be the first meeting of the parties that have ratified the Kyoto protocol, which came into force only in February of this year. That alone makes it a truly historic event. The most important and urgent business at Montreal will be to reach agreement on the final legal underpinnings of the protocol—something that could not be done until it came into force. Moreover, that process of achieving agreement to those legal underpinnings is not without difficulty, controversy and disagreement.
	By all means let us lift our eyes from time to time to the peaks and pinnacles that further global agreement might, in time, make attainable. I give further reassurance to the right hon. Member for West Dorset that the Government pledged in our election manifesto to pursue such an agreement, but we must not fail to observe and tackle the icefields and crevasses that yawn at our feet, and which stand between us and such an outcome.

Margaret Beckett: If I may, I will come to my hon. Friend's question in a moment. First, I want to advise, if I may, him and the House to ignore anyone who says that the Montreal meeting will be easy. It will not. They must treat with polite scepticism anyone who says that all this is simple. It is not. The only people who think that they already have all the answers—I know there are some—are, frankly, those who have not understood the question.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) asked me a slightly different and specific point. I can see the attractions of the idea of contraction and convergence, but it is only one of a plethora of ideas that are already in discussion. I cannot tell whether, when we finally come to whatever agreement around which might coalesce some international acceptance and understanding, some of the elements that have stimulated the proposal for contraction and convergence might be reflected. That is entirely possible but at this moment, there is as much opposition as there is support among those who would have to agree on that proposal.
	I do not say this pejoratively, but contraction and convergence is the fashionable option. It has obvious and evident attractions, but it is not the only idea around and there are many people who have great reservations. No one at all will sign up to it until they have thought carefully about what the implications are, not only for their own economies but for the economies of others. With genuine respect, I remind my hon. Friend and the House that the most loaded word in the English language is "fair".

Norman Baker: No, because it is unrealistic to expect that as a consequence of discussing such matters and trying to find a common base all three parties will produce identical policies. That is impossible and it would be pointless to try to achieve it. However, we can reach agreement on some essentials; for example, on the science, on the 60 per cent. cut in carbon emissions, on aviation and the emissions trading scheme and on more money for energy efficiency. There are many things on which we can agree. I want a solid foundation to be laid and for us to communicate that to the public. We could even build a couple of storeys on that foundation and each of the three parties could build their own different structures on those storeys. Some will include nuclear power; others will include something else. It does not matter. What matters is that we stress our common agreement rather than always picking on differences and reducing the debate to saying, "You're wrong about nuclear power or you're right about something else." That is not productive. Let us try to find out what we have in common.
	It might be appropriate to quote Churchill, given that he served as a Liberal MP and as a Conservative MP. He said, of a different matter:
	"The era of procrastination . . . of soothing and baffling expedience, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences."—[Official Report, 12 November 1936; Vol. 317, c. 1117.]
	That is where we are now with climate change, which is the driver that needs to bring us together. Normal national politics has not delivered. We in our own parties have attempted to grasp the solution, but no one has delivered the cuts in emissions and the approach that is necessary given the threat that we face. So let us, as political parties, find what we have in common, rather than the differences. I welcome the fact that, in response to my letter, the Conservative spokesman, the right hon. Member for West Dorset has said, "Yes, let's try to do that", because doing so is not easy. It would be much easier to find differences and to go on about congestion charges in Edinburgh and so on. Such things are easy to find, but that is not constructive, and the public would not thank us for doing so.
	I stress that, as far as I am concerned—I think that I speak for the right hon. Member for West Dorset as well—the motion is not about attacking the Government. We are interested not in doing that, but in doing something constructive. We want the Secretary of State on board because she has expertise and any arrangement must eventually have the Government on board if it is to carry weight with the public. If all three parties worked together and agreed in some shape or form, it would help to communicate the message to the public and it would be easier to take the difficult decisions that are necessary. Such decisions are sometimes necessary for the long term, but they may also have short-term political consequences. I do not pretend that all the differences will disappear, that everything will be sweetness and light and that there will be no difficulties about certain issues—of course, there will—but let us try to go some way along that road.

Norman Baker: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification, which is now on the record.
	Let me turn to the reply that I received from the Secretary of State. I am grateful to her for the fact that her letter arrived yesterday. She said that she would
	"welcome a cross-party consensus on climate change."
	She used those words this afternoon. I wrote them down in shorthand, so I have got them accurately recorded. I welcome the fact that she said that. She may be rather sceptical this afternoon—fair enough. It is up to us to prove that we are serious about this business, and I hope that she will respond accordingly.
	The Secretary of State's letter includes a number of reasons why she was not prepared to join us at this juncture. In one paragraph, she refers to uncertainties in the two Opposition parties: first, the Conservative leadership election; secondly, that party's position on a number of key issues; and, thirdly, the Liberal Democrats' policy review. As for the latter two reasons, I reiterate that we should seek out the many areas of agreement, rather than trying to identify one or two issues that she would use as a veto on any agreement. We do not need to have everything agreed. So, with respect, I do not think that those are very good reasons. As for the Conservative leadership campaign, I sincerely hope that the right hon. Member for West Dorset will still be in his position after that process has concluded. That would be good for continuity's sake.
	The Secretary of State's letter also refers to the position of India and China, and I know that she takes that very seriously. We have exchanged views on this before and I recognise and accept how sensitive the issue is. I recognise absolutely that we cannot start to dictate what those countries should have. I spent some time over the summer in India meeting Indian politicians and business leaders on the very issue of climate change. I came away with a very strong view of how they feel. Of course, the issue is to guide all the different ships into harbour, and that is not necessarily very easy to do.
	The Indian politicians whom I met said that they were potentially very responsive to what the EU was doing. They recognised that we in Europe were giving a lead, and they were also quite happy with the idea of contraction and convergence, which they regard as a fair and equitable way forward. I am sure that the Secretary of State has heard the same response. However, they were vociferous—that is a fair word to use—about the attitude of the American Administration. The Indians take the view that they do not see why they should make sacrifices when the American Administration are not doing the same. That seems to be a perfectly fair position to take.
	I want to digress slightly to pick up what the Secretary of State said about the Prime Minister. I, for one, am perfectly happy to accept that he has been going out of his way to deal with the issue internationally. I am happy to accept that he has got this on the agenda and that he has made some progress. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to say that. I wish he could make even more progress.
	I made the point, however, in the last Liberal Democrat Opposition day debate before the election that I am genuinely worried. The Prime Minister is playing a difficult game diplomatically to try to get everyone corralled in one place and then get them going in the same direction at the same time. I do not underestimate the difficulties of that. On the one hand, he has countries such as India and China and, on the other, he has the United States, which takes an unhelpful view. My genuine fear is that, to try to bring the US Administration on board, he will be prepared to sacrifice the idea of mandatory targets in some shape or form to make sure that they can sign a piece of paper. I understand why he would want to do that, but it would not be a satisfactory outcome.

Norman Baker: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that that could be tackled, first, if World Trade Organisation rules were altered to take account of the environment in a way in that they currently do not and secondly, if the proper environmental costs of transport were incorporated?

Alan Simpson: Yes, it could be done if the WTO became a world sustainable environment organisation but I see no prospect of that. The tragedy is that global institutions are intellectually out to lunch. They are hostages to corporate greed and those who write the history of our time will probably describe it as an era of economic cannibalism in which society set about trying to consume itself. The prospect of change driven from the level of global institutions is remote.
	Despite all that, the Labour Government have made some landmark decisions nationally. Sadly, they have often been undermined or compromised by economic short-termism. It is worth putting on record that only a Labour Government made the commitment in law to eradicate all fuel poverty in Britain by 2016. DEFRA has consistently tried to push that programme despite the fact that its budget has been cut and that it has been undermined by contradictory decisions by other Departments. For example, the decision to build a range of £60,000 houses that will be exempt from thermal insulation standards is nonsense. We might avoided that if it had been up to DEFRA rather than the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
	Sadly, at the same time as making the terrific set of commitments on fuel poverty, Parliament has promoted a growth in aviation, the carbon consequences of which wipe out all other gains. We also have economic policies that actively promote a huge growth in global product miles, without making any attempt to consider the carbon content of those product miles or the environmental impact on areas in the south that are pushed into supplying for the north long before they can feed themselves.
	In this current Parliament, two laudable private Members' Bills on sustainable energy and on micro-generation might well be spiked or talked out—sadly, I fear, by opposition from those on my own Benches—because while their ideas are desirable, the resources involved are uncertain. So those Bills might well not reach the statute book.
	Against that background, we must engage with the changes that need to be made, with urgency and excitement. Many of those changes are already happening, some outside Parliament and outside this country. I have spoken on other occasions about the work that is being carried out internationally on food security. Over the past 10 years or more, there have been phenomenal achievements, particularly by the European Slow Food movement, on internationalising the case for reinvesting in local and sustainable food systems, strengthening food accountability, shortening food miles, reducing the congestion and pollution that result from the long-distance trans-shipment of goods, and reconnecting with the sustainability of the land itself.
	Having registered that point, I want to focus on energy and housing. I have been doing quite a lot to address the questions of how we can recycle water and generate energy for ourselves in our own living situations. However, the more work that I have done on this, the more I have discovered that other people are already way ahead of me. In Berlin, for instance, 75 per cent. of all new buildings have solar panels built into their design. Toronto is dealing with the problems of summer heat by removing the air conditioning systems from buildings and replacing them with water cooling systems using water drawn from Lake Ontario. There are some fantastically imaginative schemes building renewable and sustainable energy systems into the way in which people think about how they live.
	This country actually has two grounds for claiming to be a global leader. One—perversely for me, as a northerner—is to be found in Woking. Over the past 13 years, Woking has moved quietly towards being energy self-sufficient. It now produces 135 per cent. of its own energy needs, entirely—I think—from sustainable and renewable sources. Within the next couple of years, it is going out of the national grid because it found that every £1 worth of energy that it was putting into the grid was costing £7 to £10 to claim back out. To understand why that was happening, we have only to look at the national system of energy production. There we discover that 70 per cent. of the energy inputs into our energy industry go up in smoke. If we look at any power station, we can see this happening. The national grid transmission system leaks like a sieve. That is not the model that we need to work on for the 21st century.
	In Denmark, 40 per cent. of energy supply already comes from local energy systems, and in the Netherlands, the figure is 50 per cent. However, world leadership in this regard is to be found here in merry old London, where the Labour loyalist, Ken Livingstone, has pinched the borough engineer from Woking and appointed him as his new climate change adviser, and accepted the challenge to make London energy self-sufficient within a decade. Production will probably come from biodigesters or bioreactors, rather than incinerators, but it will not require a jot of nuclear power. Not one jot. That is because local energy systems can already cope with the energy gap that we fear. We could power this country on the energy that we throw away.
	I want to finish by making four propositions. First, I modestly proposed an Energy Markets Bill in the last Session, and I urge the Government to accept its provisions. Secondly, we should consider imposing a carbon miles quota on all airports. Thirdly, we should follow London's example in promoting local energy networks and support its global cities initiative. Fourthly, we should make building constructors and developers responsible for 50 per cent. of the energy of the buildings that they throw up. I proposed that to a conference of the building supply industry a week ago, and everyone looked at me in horror. However, I pointed out that they were probably smart enough to realise that, if they put in their own energy systems, they could probably meet the whole supply, charge more, and earn more as a result.

Nick Hurd: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson), who showed where we can go with a bit of energy, imagination and political leadership in terms of driving forward the sustainable energy agenda. I enjoyed his speech.
	I want to focus my remarks on the international effort and strategy on this global issue. The question seems to be: where do we invest the finite source of political energy available to tackle this most complex issue, riddled as it is with uncertainties? I detect a change in the wind. I detect it in the remarks of the Prime Minister, and in the initiatives taken by countries in Asia Pacific, Australia and America after the Gleneagles summit. This change reflects a growing realisation that we are on the wrong course—a course to failure.
	The fruit of the past 15 years of political endeavour has been the Kyoto treaty. My hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) has said that it is an important milestone, but the closer we look at it, the more limited it appears. It will make a marginal impact on carbon concentration, and its value lies only in demonstrating international co-operation. It was holed below the waterline by the absence of the United States and the emerging giants. It creates no serious incentives for new technology. In the process of negotiation and implementation, the political machine has failed to carry the public with it. Under those circumstances, in the short term, focusing the political machine on trying to follow up that agreement with a new universal agreement on a bigger scale but on the same premise for a greener set of absolute CO 2 reductions seems highly questionable. It looks very hard to achieve—I do not know what other colleagues felt, but the remarks of the Secretary of State left me with no confidence that an international agreement would be in place by 2012. Were we to pursue that course for another agreement to negotiate absolute CO 2 reductions, it would be of limited value. Those targets will necessarily be arbitrary, as there is still too much scientific uncertainty as to what a safe level of carbon concentration is, and if they are negotiated on the same basis as Kyoto 1, the targets would be effectively unenforceable.
	Those who push for this course argue in the cause of taking out an insurance policy against catastrophic risk. It is an attractive theory, but ultimately, who buys an insurance policy that will not give certainty of covering the risk? That uncertainty is undermining the effectiveness of the political process. In terms of international strategy, I would prefer the political machine to focus on creating the conditions that will make universal agreement much more plausible. The priority must be to generate the momentum that has been lacking over the past 15 years in making a difference to the scenario of emissions, which are growing. The requirement to reduce the uncertainty of the science and economics of climate change has been absent from this debate. A huge amount has been done in the past 15 years, but ultimately what comes through to the layman is how little we know. Greater certainty is therefore an absolute priority.
	The second priority must be to accelerate the deployment and development of low-carbon technology. The good news is that the technology exists that can make a difference, but it is too expensive today. Not only is it right to focus political energy on making this technology cheaper, but it is clearly in the interests of many countries, particularly Britain. As we become an energy importer, energy security becomes increasingly important to this country. A superb and massive commercial opportunity also exists for those countries, and companies in those countries, who can see the potential in renewable technology. President Clinton's comments in the much-discussed summit in New York were bang-on the money: we will only make a difference when people smell a buck. Those conditions are not sufficiently in place at the moment. The acceleration of low-carbon technology is clearly a win-win for Britain and must be at the heart of any new international initiative.
	Talking of win-wins, surely it is time for Governments across the world to start picking the low-hanging fruit of energy efficiency. It has been sitting on the branches for 20 years and every Government during that period have talked about it, yet none have delivered on it. The hon. Member for Nottingham, South mentioned the example of Woking's Conservative-led council becoming self-sufficient in energy. I encourage the Government to look at what is happening in Braintree, where another Conservative-led council has negotiated an agreement with British Gas, whereby it will offer council tax payers real money for taking on board an energy efficiency package. The early data suggest that the public are responding, and there are signs of a real breakthrough. Consumer apathy towards such a proposition is breaking down, and I hope that the Government will look closely at that example.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey pointed out, the short-term priority is the industrialisation of China, Brazil and India. The carbon intensity of that process must be minimised. Doing so is in our interests not least because of the need to deal with carbon concentrations and to reduce CO 2 emissions. However, there is also a superb commercial opportunity for those companies that can seize that initiative in all our interests.
	European Governments in particular should seize the opportunity to develop the emissions trading mechanism by giving it serious teeth. In looking at the first round of negotiations, most commentators see all the mechanism's failings. It is diluted and weak, has no teeth, does not deal with aviation and operates within very restricted sectors. There is an opportunity in Europe to develop an emissions trading scheme with teeth that can be pointed to as a global template. That is where political energy should be focused.

Mark Lazarowicz: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way during what is a very interesting and constructive speech. Does he agree that the European Union has a good record, in that it is among the leaders in trying to address climate change through specific, Europe-wide policies? Does he further agree that there is a lot of merit in the proposed mandatory Europe-wide renewable energy targets, which would encourage the Europe-wide growth of renewable energy?

Mark Lazarowicz: I begin by declaring an interest, in the support that I have received from the sustainable energy partnership in connection with the promotion and development of the private Member's Bill to which hon. Members have already given favourable mention. I hope that they will support both my Bill and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) on 11 November.
	The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said that he had put climate change at the centre of his election address, but had received no positive response from the public. I also made climate change central, but had a more positive response from the public than he did. Over the last few months, I have become aware of the extent to which members of the public are concerned about the issue. Interest in it has clearly increased and been encouraged by events such as Hurricane Katrina. As politicians, we should recognise that the public are now demanding action from us. The notion that we are ahead of the public is no longer true. On the contrary, the public are overtaking many of us in their demand for action and their recognition of the need for action. That is why I welcome today's debate.
	I agree with the attempts to build some sort of consensus on a way forward. I certainly recognise the sincerity of the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) in calling for such a consensus, but I would chide him mildly. As I am not always the most consensual of people, I should point out that he said roughly the same thing today as he did in the debate of four months ago. We are entitled to expect some more positive proposals when he next speaks on the issue, and I am sure that he will introduce some specific proposals then. Whatever the reasons for trying to develop a consensus, it is clear that we must do so because many of the necessary decisions will be difficult to take if the Government do not have broad support from within Parliament and among the public at large.
	One of my fears is that it might be too easy to reach a consensus. Although it is wrong to suggest that every measure required to tackle climate change is necessarily difficult, it is equally the case that difficult choices must be made and we do not want to end up achieving a consensus at too low a level. As well as reaching consensus here, it is important to develop a movement outside Parliament.
	Other hon. Members as well as me will welcome the Stop Climate Chaos coalition, which has brought together development, climate and environmental non-governmental organisations in a campaign to develop the sort of public pressure on climate change that was so effective in the run-up to the G8. The coalition is important because it allows the possibility of bringing international pressure on Governments across the world. If we saw such an international coalition developing, we might be surprised at what could be achieved at the international level. We should certainly set the highest possible targets for international agreement on action to tackle climate change.
	I want to make three specific points about the sort of steps that we can take here and now in the UK in order to play our part both in bringing about an international response and in responding to public demand for action on these issues.
	First, the immense programme of house building resulting from Government policy and market demand presents opportunities in the near future. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) that we must use that programme to ensure that new properties have the highest standards of energy efficiency. We must also enable them to generate energy, rather than just consume it; otherwise, we will miss an opportunity to kick-start the market for renewable energy, and particularly for those micro-renewables that have such major potential to contribute to this country's energy mix.
	I hope that we will take that opportunity, which may be unique. It makes sense to do so, regardless of what international agreements may be achieved. People who take advantage of these technologies can save money, as long as the market is grown and bulk demand secured. For people on low income in particular, it makes economic sense to have energy-efficient properties which, where possible, generate their own energy rather than just consume it.
	Secondly, when the climate change programme review results are known, we must ensure that decisions are taken that set a long-term agenda. Industry and consumers need to have confidence that renewable opportunities both locally and nationally will find a response in Government policy. That must happen, whatever we feel about nuclear power.
	There is a danger that the current debate could cause uncertainty about the prospects for renewable energy and energy conservation. It is a field with great potential, and we must make sure that clear targets are set for micro-generation, and for the use of renewables at the UK level more generally. In that way, the market and consumers can have confidence that renewable energy production will remain important in the future, and that its role will not diminish. The UK has immense potential when it comes to renewables: we have made a good start, but a lot more needs to be done.
	My final point is relevant to the Government, to Back-Bench Members of all parties, and to the general public, and it is that we must be consistent. There is no point in having the best policies in the world to encourage renewables, energy conservation, recycling, and the more efficient use of energy by business and consumers if they are undermined by policies in other areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South spoke about aviation, and it is clear that the Government must reconsider their policy on airports. However, hon. Members of all parties, as well as local authorities around the country, are always calling for more airports, flights and air travel. That is not consistent with a policy that tries to address the problems of climate change.
	There is a similar problem with road travel. Today, the call is for policies to tackle climate change and control carbon emissions. Yesterday, there was a call from some Conservative Members—although it could just as easily have come from hon. Members of other parties—for more roads to be built in their particular localities. We must accept that we cannot allow ourselves to be accused of double-talk: we cannot call for tough measures to tackle climate change and carbon emissions and at the same time promote policies in our own areas that offer short-term political advantage, when in our heart of hearts we know that such policies will have an opposite effect on carbon emissions and climate change.
	As politicians, it is our duty to act and speak consistently on this matter. I am not making a party-political point, but as I said at the start of my contribution, the public expect more of us now. They will not accept a failure on our part to follow through on our commitments on these issues. It is time for us to take practical action on specific policies and respond to growing public demand. I therefore hope that we can secure consensus on the need for appropriate policies, and on action as well.

Theresa Villiers: I am delighted to follow some eloquent speakers whose knowledge and expertise so far outweigh my own. I am also delighted that the Opposition chose to debate this issue because, unlike some of the more pessimistic Members in the Chamber this evening, I can say that many of my constituents are highly concerned about the issue, which was raised with me during the election campaign by a number of people.
	I am also delighted that the Opposition chose to debate climate change because, as we have heard, the environment is not an issue traditionally associated with the Conservative party. Regardless, for example, of whether the dash for gas had only a serendipitous effect on carbon emissions or whether it was deliberate, it has always been true that the Conservative party has been extremely effective at a local level in conserving the environment. Any campaign to preserve a local wood or green space tends to be packed with Conservative activists.
	The environment is not and never should be the exclusive territory of the left, and a striking feature of today's debate is the call for all parties to make this a priority. Clearly we will have significant distinctions on the way we address the issue, most notably on nuclear energy, but one thing that must unite us is that we cannot go on like this; something has to change and we must work together to drive the issue up the political agenda.
	I believe that Conservative and centre right parties have demonstrated that they have always had the knack for working with the grain of human nature and for achieving policy goals in a way that is in tune with the way people think and live, rather than forcing top-down centralised plans on an unwilling public. We need that kind of inventiveness in this area as well.
	In line with other speakers, I should like to see the Government subjected to more control, scrutiny and accountability on reducing carbon emissions. By contrast, I should like to see consumers given more incentives and encouragement to reduce carbon emissions.
	At the heart of what the Opposition are arguing for this evening are institutional changes to deal with a key problem, in that effective measures to tackle climate change yield rewards only in the very long term, yet the pain caused by such changes and effective measures is immediate. The way the political system operates militates against effective action on climate change for precisely that reason.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) advocates the idea that, essentially, Government action on climate change that is effective should be recognised and rewarded and that Government failure on climate change should be exposed and punished, to build genuine accountability into the system. We have heard a number of ways in which this can be done, in particular the establishment of an independent body, which is crucial. I am surprised that so many Labour Members who spoke at length about the lack of progress and their concerns on climate change cannot support such an obviously positive goal.
	Driving energy issues up the agenda in every single Department of State is also crucial. There is no point in having an environmental policy that comes solely from DEFRA; we have to strengthen the hand of the environmental departments so that environmental issues are covered right across Government, particularly transport and industry. We must encourage consumers to take action, bring the consumer with us in tackling climate change, and encourage consumers to reduce their carbon emissions, in particular by focusing on energy efficiency.
	There is much more I would like to say but I am conscious that we are rapidly running out of time.

Norman Lamb: I thank the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) for her generosity in allowing time for me to speak. I also pay genuine tribute to the truly worthwhile initiative taken by the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) and my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker). I hope that the Government will take that initiative seriously, not only in their response to the debate tonight, but in the months and weeks ahead. At best, it provides the opportunity for the Government—and opposition parties—to be more courageous in some of the more difficult decisions needed.
	Although we talk about how the public are beginning to understand better the imperative to tackle climate change, we are still a long way from getting the message across about the priority of taking effective action. We see that when oil prices rise and fuel protests are threatened. As political parties, we must get away from narrow party politicking and recognise the bigger goal of achieving real change.
	When I talk to climate experts at the University of East Anglia, they tell of their fear that we are already too late to take effective action, but that is no reason for not trying. I want the political parties to lead public opinion on the issue. It is difficult to establish a link in the public's mind between what they hear about global warming and the actual effects on their lives. We hear of extreme events, such as Boscastle a couple of years ago and the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, but there is no irrefutable proof that they were caused by global warming, although they probably were. However, we have examples in this country of real proof of the impact that global warming will have on us—the impact will of course be much greater in countries such as Bangladesh, where the potential loss of life is horrific—and evidence is building in my county of Norfolk of real potential damage. Experts say that sea levels could rise by 1 ft—with apologies for using the old currency—in the next 50 years, primarily because of global warming. Added to that, the Government are neglecting sea defences. For example, this year the Environment Agency will not be funded to replenish beaches in my constituency south of Sea Palling, but that is the point at which the sea can get into the broads.
	In 1953, 300 people lost their lives in the east of England, but 8,100 people drowned in Holland. At that time, global warming had not had an impact, but rises in sea level of 1 ft and an increased incidence of extreme events, such as storm surges, could lead to a devastating impact on the broads area, causing loss of lives, homes and livelihoods. We are on the front line of the impact of global warming and it is therefore essential for the Government to address the issue of sea defences, so that we can prepare for the future, and essential for us all to tackle the imperative of climate change.

Bill Wiggin: What an interesting debate we have had. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) on his consensual approach. He was optimistic and, as always, highly intelligent, yet gentle in his approach. He talked clearly about the path to 2050 and about the steps that we shall need to take to reach the 60 per cent. reduction target. I was disappointed by the slightly cynical nature of the interventions he took, although my faith was restored by the honesty and integrity with which he responded to them.
	In her speech, the Secretary of State, was just a little too satisfied with the words of the Prime Minister. I hoped that she might have focused more on the results—what the Government have, or have not, achieved during the past eight years. It was clear from my right hon. Friend's answers to the Secretary of State what the body we had been talking about would do. I hope that she will think more carefully about his answers and the implications not only for the Government but for the whole planet. I agreed with her comment that we cannot lecture the other 189 countries about climate change; we must lead by example. I wish we were doing more to achieve that.
	My hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) gave a wise and well-informed speech—prophetic, I suggest. I particularly liked his comment that the economy is part of the environment, not the other way around. That balance is key if we are to make the sort of progress that we have been discussing this afternoon.
	The hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) made four interesting suggestions. I do not think that he is a heretic; he made some constructive comments and I hope they will be taken on board. He looks slightly horrified, but he and I have agreed many times in the past.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) talked about the international element of the problems we face, especially whether we shall have agreement by 2012. His speech was concerned, eloquent and measured. He talked about low carbon technology and pointed out that making it cheaper was fundamental to any constructive progress in reducing the effects of climate change.
	I liked very much my hon. Friend's comments on energy efficiency: particularly important for a country that has only 2 per cent. of the problem is whether we can be the role model that we should be. If we are the fourth most powerful economy in the world, we are perfectly positioned to set an example. If we do not, we shall never be more than 2 per cent. of the solution. We must take this opportunity and use our role in the world to make a difference. I liked his suggestion about carbon intensity as a percentage of gross domestic product and I shall think carefully about that.
	The hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) made three points. He talked about the house building programme, about the long-term agenda, stability, certainty and clarity that people need if they are to do the right thing and about how important it is that policies do not conflict. His examples could have taken the third point one step further. I believe that the Government were right when they talked about joined-up government, which fits in with what he was saying about the lack of conflict in policy, but we are not getting the joined-up government that I know Ministers want to deliver but are finding difficult.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) talked about scrutiny of the Government and said that the Government must be open and clear. She said that consumers need to be encouraged to do the right thing. As is typical of her, she dissected the problem clearly. She talked about how the time scale contributes to the difficulties that we face with short-term pain for long-term gain. Her speech was, if anything, far too short, which is typical of her very generous nature.
	The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) talked about the consensus element that has been touched on today, the impact of global warming and his worries about the effect on his constituents.
	We have been all over the world with the debate. We have talked about the Government's global discussions, about the global solutions that we need to achieve and a great deal about what we can do to make an impact on the rest of the world. We could have talked a lot more about what we have done ourselves. When I start to think about what the world will be like in 2050—as I am sure that you do, Mr. Speaker—I realise that I shall be 84 by then. Depending on the Government crisis in pensions, I may well still be here but not yet Father of the House—one can never tell—but if we are still alive by then, perhaps the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Bradshaw), and I will be grandparents, and when we have our grandchildren on our knee I am worried that we may be dealing with their questions about what we did to stop the climate changing. My concern is that he may have to answer that, although the Government set tough and ambitious targets, they failed to meet them.
	We have talked about climate change, but the Government have not got carbon emissions to decrease. In fact, they have increased. We were all promised joined-up government and that we would recycle 25 per cent. of household waste, but we are becoming worse than almost every other country in Europe. It is very worrying that such figures are coming out. We have talked about Britain topping the EU league for increasing carbon emissions from electricity and heat production. If we do not cut our carbon dioxide emissions, we are likely to fail the Kyoto targets. If Britain misses her Kyoto targets, it would be very damaging not only for our environment, but for our standing and place in the world.
	The climate change levy, which was discussed earlier, has proven a failure. It raises some £800 million a year, but it is far from clear where that money is spent. Only £40 million has been spent on developing solar energy systems, for example. In June, the Government announced that they would invest £25 million in carbon capture and storage schemes. The cost of creating carbon capture and storage models in the North sea could be as low as £40 million, so why cannot the Government add an extra £15 million from their £800 million to achieve that? The Norwegian company, Statoil, has been successfully using that method in the North sea for the past nine years. The technology is there; we have got to get on with using it.
	We have difficulties with transport, which accounts for 22 per cent. of Britain's greenhouse gas emissions. The EU biofuels directive set a target of substituting 2 per cent. of fuels used, by energy content, with biofuels by the end of this year. The Government have set Britain's target at just 0.3 per cent. In 2003, biofuels represented only about 0.05 per cent. of the total automotive fuel market.
	California is developing a hydrogen highway. Iceland estimates that it will power its whole infrastructure with hydrogen in 30 years. Britain could be doing so much better. Household waste is increasing by 3 per cent. a year. Germany diverts nearly four times as much and Denmark five times as much waste from landfill per person as Britain does.
	On the Government's success rate in implementing the Cabinet Office guidelines on environmental legislation, they have managed to get them right only 16 out of 85 times. Last year, just 34 out of 121 regulations complied with the Cabinet Office guideline of issuing advice 12 weeks before implementation—a success rate of 28 per cent.
	The Government can do a great deal. I believe that they want to do it, and they should take the opportunity of the consensus that has been offered. It is entirely constructive, and I am sure that, when the Secretary of State has had a good chance to think about it, she will see the benefits not only to the Government and our country, but to the whole planet.

Ben Bradshaw: The right hon. Member for West Dorset was slightly more candid when he acknowledged—I think—that he did not really except us to accept his offer at least until he was ready to come up with proposals, after he was frank enough to admit that he did not actually have any proposals at this stage.
	Although I am a natural consensualist, I am slightly cautious of the prospect of trying to reach consensus while the Conservative party is in the throes of a leadership election, the outcome of which we do not know. We do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman will still be in charge of its climate change policy after that election, although I hope that he will be for the reasons that I outlined earlier. I certainly hope that his man and wing of the party wins the election so that we might maintain the consensus that we have built over the past few weeks. The hon. Member for Lewes said that we needed to reach out in a fog, but I assumed that the fog to which he was referring was the Liberal Democrat policy review.
	It is not realistic for us to achieve the sort of consensus that the hon. Member for Lewes and the right hon. Member for West Dorset envisage until both the Liberal Democrat policy review and the Conservative leadership election are out of the way. At that time, we might be able to do so. The door is open for this great idea, so I hope that we will be able to make process when both those issues are resolved.
	I take the offer at face value and think that it is an interesting and constructive idea. I welcome both it and the fact that the House is debating one of the most important issues that faces mankind in such a constructive and consensual way. However, if the Opposition parties are serious about a consensus, they should take up the constructive suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle and not press the motion to a vote.

Huw Irranca-Davies: I entirely agree. We need a portfolio approach and the ability to make long-term decisions, based on the fiscal measures that are in place not just for five years but for 10 or 20. The energy suppliers and generators—the people who will invest in this technology—need the security of knowing that they can make those long-term decisions.
	I am pleased that the DTI has recognised that clean coal and related technologies have a role to play, as have the Welsh Assembly Government. But the Minister must recognise the concern from the National Union of Mineworkers, Amicus, Tower and others that the investment in clean coal technology is less than it should be. There should be more. The USA has led the way in this regard, investing significantly in gasification technology and, to a lesser extent, carbon capture. China has undertaken retrofit programmes on several power plants and is experimenting with gasification. My argument to the Minster is that we have a golden opportunity to develop a UK lead in this market and to export our technology worldwide—I know that he realises this—but it could so easily be missed through under-investment.
	On 14 June 2005, the Minister said:
	"Reaching our ambitious target of cutting carbon emissions by 60 per cent. by 2050 means action now to support emerging technologies that will enable us to burn coal and gas more cleanly."
	The Minister was absolutely right and we need to know the scale of that investment. Nick Otter, the director of technology and external affairs at Alstom Power welcomed the
	"willingness of the UK to take a portfolio approach to the reduction and management of carbon dioxide at the heart of climate change."
	Andrew Davies, the economic development Minister in the Welsh Assembly Government, also recognises this potential in the "Energy Wales" consultation document. He notes that south Wales is a net importer of energy, which is remarkable in the light of my earlier comments on the reserves of good-quality coal in the south Wales coalfield. He said:
	"Security of Energy supply requires us to continue to ensure a diversity of fuel supplies which means pressing for the development of cleaner coal operations and the eventual carbon capture for the carbon dioxide emissions of fossil fuelled stations generally."
	In Wales, therefore, a review is under way. A coal technical advice note is to be developed for 2006, and there is a will to put in place a demonstration gasification project by 2010. Wales has a key strategic role to play.
	The Uskmouth power station in Newport already utilises flue gas desulphurisation—FGS—and is one of the cleanest plants of its size in the UK, and the necessary consents to fit FGS to Aberthaw have been obtained. Those retrofitted devices are a great improvement—they achieve carbon savings of 15 to 20 per cent.—but newer, purpose-built, cleaner plants must be the longer-term solution.